Blackbird
by DrCyrusBortel
Summary: Hiccup finally achieves his dream of becoming a fighter pilot – in a superfast interceptor derivative of the legendary Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft, no less. Trouble is, he's flying backseat to ace pilot Astrid Hofferson. Can love still bloom on the nuclear battlefields of the Atomic Age? Or will Astrid kill him before the H-bombs do?
1. Subcrisis Maneuvering

The HTTYD franchise is the property of DreamWorks, Inc. This story was written for personal amusement.

This story is set in an alternate history universe. Unhistorical persons, technologies or events should be objects of merriment rather than cause for alarm.

=O=

_"Yea, though I walk though the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for I am at 80,000 feet and climbing."_

_Sign over the entrance to the old SR-71 operating base, Kadena, Japan._

=O=

Chapter 1

Over The Himalayas

Astrid Hofferson scanned the horizon – a hazy pale blue line of thick soupy air, dwarfed utterly by the expanse of purple stratosphere and vault of night-black space that stretched above and beyond it. Without blinking an eye, she went into a wide turn, and shifted her gaze downward. 45,000 feet – fifteen kilometers! - below her beckoned the Himalayas, Roof of the World, an endless expanse of craggy, snowcapped peaks, rocky mountain passes, and dirty white glaciers.

She flinched as the harsh sunlight shone directly into her cockpit, raising her gloved hand to cover her helmet visor. In the distance, she caught a glimpse of her wingman, 2,000 feet below her.

Astrid checked her radar again. Nada. Zilch. "Longhouse, this is Nadder 1. I have lost contact with the bogies; repeat, I have no visual or radar contact."

"Nadder 1, this is Longhouse. They're right under you. Bogeys are at 15,000 feet and descending, heading due north at 0.7 mach… and… they're off our scopes. Prepare to go down."

Astrid cursed. Designed to intercept supersonic high-altitude bombers, the F-106A Delta Dart was a creature of the stratosphere, a fact which showed in the sleek interceptor's long, thin body, single tall tail, and huge triangle-shaped delta wing.

Unfortunately, the bogeys had hit the deck. The big radar in the large, pointed nose of the F-106, powerful as it was, could not track or engage targets near the horrendous clutter created by radar reflections off the ground. To allow her radar to pick up the bogeys, Astrid needed to catch her targets against a backdrop of empty sky – which meant either going astride or below them.

In the thick muck below, slower but more maneuverable fighters stood a better chance of outfighting Astrid's interceptor. But, even shorn of its high-altitude advantages, the Delta Dart could still be deadly if flown well.

Astrid was one of the best, and she knew it.

Her wingman was another matter. "Lieutenant, hang back and hold at angels 10. Watch my back, and kill 'em if they pop up. I'm going in."

"Got it, Captain. Nadder 2 out. Gonna be chillin at 10,000 feet, doin' overwatch."

"Copy." While Astrid would have preferred a more aggressive two-on-two fight, she was keenly aware of Tuffnut's limitations. Flying defensive was well within Nadder 2's abilities.

Astrid tipped her nose over, and plunged into the rocky crags of the Himalayas, punching through cloud layers as she went.

The F-106 shuddered as it broke the sound barrier, and the thick air seemed to shake her like a leaf. Astrid took a deep breath as the glaciers leapt towards her. "Okay, Stormfly. Hold together, old girl." She pulled hard on the stick, and the F-106 leveled out just under the mountain peaks.

Astrid banked hard to avoid a mountain. Tuffnut hollered on the radio. "Astrid, I see 'em! Your three o'clock high!"

The F-106's nose pitched briefly down, and Astrid got her first glimpse of her foes – a pair of pencil-thin jets with swept-back wings, a steeply raked tail and a sunken nose hiding a huge jet engine. Indian Air Force MiG-21s, flying low at barely 3,000 feet to avoid radar.

Astrid keyed her mic. "Longhouse, bandits sighted. Two MiG-21s, angels 3, 400 knots, 62/51 Bullseye. Getting under them."

Since breaking off diplomatic relations with the _Joint Government of the Pacific_ two years prior, Communist India had become increasingly bellicose regarding the outstanding Pacifican-Indian border disputes. At the behest of Moscow, Indian penetration flights – flown by a mix of Indian pilots and Soviet "instructors" - were now violating Joint Government airspace on a weekly basis, often ranging far beyond the usual Indian claims and flying deep into Tibet and Yunnan.

Astrid gritted her teeth as she awaited the inevitable orders to observe the enemy.

"Hey Cap! Bet you're sorry you voted for Zhou and Eisenhower now, huh?"

"Shut up, you pinko." Astrid seethed. Tuffnut just laughed.

For months, Portland had denied any and all requests to shoot down the intruding flights. What was the point, argued the strategists, of getting involved in a war in dirt-poor South Asia when the real prize – the one dangling before the jaws of a half-dozen Soviet tank armies – was wealthy, populous, and heavily industrialized Western Europe?

The logic was convincing in the faraway capital – it had to have been if the smart people in charge had been convinced - but the state of affairs was still heavily resented by the proud pilots of the JGAF Aerospace Defense Command.

Longhouse – ground control - came back in over the radio. "You are cleared to fire, Nadder 1."

Astrid did a double take."Roger."

Someone in Portland had apparently changed their mind.

Tuffnut almost squealed with excitement. "Cap, you're in range!" Astrid kept an eye on the bandits. While her radar could indeed lock on, Astrid knew the radar could see in a cone much wider than her missiles could reliably hit the maneuvering enemy jets. She needed to get the enemy into her killzone _first. _

With an eye on the radar, Astrid inched the Dart towards the ground, and Stormfly jigged as Astrid jockeyed for a good launch position. _Not this time, you bastards._ She turned on the radar, and the set beeped.

"Have tone! Fox one! Fox one!"

A pair of radar-guided AIM-4E Falcon missiles streaked from Astrid's jet towards the nearest MiG – which just sat there, seemingly oblivious to its impending doom.

_So, bad radar warning receivers, then._

The two missiles closed the five kilometers in as many seconds, and the first to arrive blew the MiG out of the sky.

No parachute.

_Huh. Usually, at least one of the missiles doesn't work properly. _

The other MiG immediately performed a sharp roll to the deck, below Astrid's radar horizon. Astrid turned her radar off as it filled with ground clutter, switched to infrared, and was pressed into her seat as she gave chase.

The MiG ducked into a verdant valley, following the huge green wrinkle in the earth as it wound between imposing mountain peaks. Villages, streams, and hills flashed by Astrid's cockpit window at just under the speed of sound.

All of a sudden, the MiG crested a mountain, and the ground below her turned grey and white as Astrid turned to follow.

Astrid's head spun as she tried to reacquire the MiG. _If you can't see the enemy, you're dead._

She looked down. There the MiG was, barely a hundred meters above the ground, barreling down the side of the mountain on full afterburner like a crazed skier.

_We'll see who crazier._ Astrid dove after the MiG.

Astrid held her fire. While her infrared AIM-4G Falcons (basically Falcons with infrared instead of radar seekers) might be able to track the hot afterburner, she (as before) needed to get the bandit into her engagement basket first.

The F-106 and the MiG scraped the tops of mountains, barreled above jagged mountain passes, and soared past glaciers in a mad chase as the MiG fled for safer skies.

"Captain! I've got the bandit on infrared! He's bringing you in a turn-around south! He's heading home! You wanna break off and make another run?" Tuffnut's was frantic.

Astrid kept her eyes on the MiG. "No. We're keeping up the pressure and bleeding him dry."

Fighter combat was all about energy management. In a fight, the higher and/or faster fighter had more energy to dive, turn, and run, allowing it to evade, disengage or engage at will - maneuvers which bled energy. By contrast, the lower, slower fighter, while sometimes capable of making tighter turns, was… more or less a sitting duck where missiles or gun passes were concerned. The goal of a fighter pilot was to set up a fight so that he or she preserved his/her own energy while exhausting the enemy's, allowing high-energy missile shots or easy gun runs to be made against a target without enough energy left to dodge.

Astrid kept one eye on her airspeed, and another on the MiG's. She was closing on the bastard… three klicks, and the liquid-nitrogen chilled infrared seekers of the AIM-4G Falcon missiles were nice and cool.

The MiG popped right in front of her infrared camera. On instinct, Astrid jammed hard on the trigger. "Fox two! Fox two!" One missile popped from Stormfly… and corkscrewed to the valley floor, courtesy of a malfunctioning rocket motor.

The other Falcon burned towards the MiG… which promptly turned and rolled away. The missile tried valiantly to follow – but the enemy pilot had timed his turn beautifully, and the missile simply failed to keep up with the turn, streaking uselessly past the MiG.

Astrid swore as Stormfly followed the MiG's turn into another canyon, bleeding energy in the process. _Out of missiles time to disengage. _The F-106 might have had better thrust than the MiG _gun kills aren't worth it_, but she was getting a little too slow for…

"Captain, he's leading you into a big gorge and…"

The MiG made a hard turn ahead of a mountain, and Astrid swore as she was forced to pull up – losing even more energy. In an instant, she was slow, high, and vulnerable. And the MiG was behind her.

Astrid put Stormfly into a huge, tilted vertical loop (a wingover), and as she approached the top – the apogee – of her loop, snapped her head back to track the _white plume of death headed right for me oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap …_

She hit apogee. Astrid's world went half-dark as blood rushed from her head, stymied only by the high-pressure pants of her g-suit. Stormfly seemed to hang in the air, _too slow, too slow_, her airspeed mortgaged for altitude by gravity, that indifferent bastard…

_Now or never. _

She yanked hard on the stick and rolled. Outside her window, the heatseeker rolled past her, her airspeed picked up as she shed altitude, and she began to pull out of her loop _yes yes yes yes yes wait_…

…and she yanked hard on the stick again, just in time to avoid a second heat-seeking missile. She wasn't the only one who could salvo-launch unreliable missiles.

Astrid completed her loop-de-loop, and she leveled off so close to the ground she could see individual boulders being carried along the glacier.

The MiG was still burning for home. But having lost energy in multiple desperate acrobatic maneuvers, it was low and slow. And, underpowered though the F-106 was in comparison to the newer F-4 Phantom, it still had more horses in it than the MiG.

Astrid kept her afterburner on full as she circled gently back, where the MiG was struggling to stay on the deck. She bore down on the hapless MiG.

_Gotcha. _

Her radio crackled to life. "Nadder 1, this is Longhouse. Advise disengage; we've got another asset in play."

Astrid frowned. "Screw it." Hands on the stick, she brought the target into her gunsights, took aim, and squeezed the trigger.

She led the target perfectly. The Gatling cannon, whining sharply as its six barrels spun, tore through the MiG, shredding it like tissue paper with explosive shells. She whooped as the MiG, a wing missing, went into a spin… and made a hard turn as her radar warning receiver flared to life.

For a third time in less than a minute, Astrid Hofferson's life froze as she watched a huge missile flare past her F-106… to smash onto the rocks below.

She pitched her nose up to a clear blue sky, and turned her radar on before she knew what she was doing.

A tiny dot, 70,000 feet above her, zipped past her display in less than thirty seconds.

Astrid thanked whichever egghead engineer had ever invented the IFF box.

"Cap! Did you see that?! Holy shit that was impressive! It came out of frickkin' nowhere!"

_Holy crap I almost died back there how could I have been so stupid._

"Oh, and Cap? Does this mean we can use our guns next time?"

Astrid shook her head vigorously as she climbed back to saner altitudes. "No. Most of you can't shoot for crap – and you'll get yourself killed trying to score gun kills. Unless you aced the gun course, stick to missiles." Awe crept into her voice. "Although, by the looks of things, we aren't going to be prime-time for much longer."

The Blackbird had arrived at the Himalayas.

=O=

Author's note:

_Real world: In 1963, the prototype YF-12A Blackbird, an interceptor cousin of the SR-71, began flight testing. Possessing a stupendous combat radius of 2,400 kilometers and capable of similar performance as the SR-71, the F-12B (the production version of the experimental YF-12) would have been a formidable interceptor had it entered service. Three bases with F-12Bs would have been able to effectively defend all of North America from Soviet nuclear bombers. Contrary to popular belief, the YF-12 program was intended to produce actual warplanes, and was not a mere cover for the SR-71 spyplane. Orders were in fact placed for 93 aircraft, but the program was cancelled (when the production tooling was ordered destroyed by Robert McNamara, bypassing Congress) amidst controversy regarding the F-12B's cost-effectiveness._


	2. Ostensible Crisis

Chapter 2

Berk Air Force Base (AFB)

Qinghai Province

Joint Government of the Pacific

"They're coming in!"

Hiccup Haddock dropped the sheaf of typewritten reports he was reading and ran out of the hanger into the freezing tarmac. The bone-dry freezing wind sweeping off the peaks of the Himalayas caught him right in the face, and he backed into the hanger to grab his parka before braving the wind once again.

Making his way around a small knoll of technicians, he emerged onto the flightline. Beyond the row of parked F-106s, their grey-white paint gleaming in the mid-morning sun, an F-106 (a 'Six) descended onto the runway. Astride the blocky letters proclaiming that the 'Six belonged to the J.G. Air Force 綜國空軍, someone had painted an indigo dragon across the grey-white fuselage of the aircraft.

The interceptor screeched onto the tarmac, and rolled to a gentle halt just outside a hangar.

The canopy cracked open, and a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman rose to her feet, her hair swaying in the wind as she doffed her helmet with an easy smile. Astrid Hofferson. Hiccup held his breath, and sighed a little inside.

_The prettiest girl on Earth. _

Wild cheers erupted from the ground crew. Astrid took a gentle bow, and stepped gracefully off the ladder and onto the ground. She stepped back a little as a pair of technicians waltzed up to her aircraft and, stencil in hand, spray-painted two more kill tallies onto _Stormfly II_.

With a theatrical flourish, the technicians removed the stencil, revealing four red stars. More cheers ensued, and Astrid took another bow.

Hiccup took a deep breath, and pushed through the crowd. "Astrid! How did it go? Did the radar work?"

Astrid shrugged at the weapons systems engineer. "Worked as advertised, Hiccup. No mishaps, clean terrain picture, and beautiful tone – both radar missiles guided perfectly. One IR Falcon went screwy on me, though. Corkscrewed right off the rail and into the ground."

Hiccup nodded enthusiastically. "Good, good. Sorry about the infrared Falcon. If the motor's buggy, we're on the list for a field x-ray machine; we can't really check until then." He thought of saying something about being proud to be part of the team that operated the complete weapons system – aircraft, maintenance teams, crew, diagnostic/support equipment, and all - but decided it would sound too braggy.

By the time Hiccup came up with a _proper_ reply, Astrid was busy briefing a gaggle of wide-eyed fighter pilots on her aerial engagement, from her decision to follow doctrine by starting the engagement from below with radar-guided missiles to her failure to disengage immediately when out of missiles – a mistake that almost cost her her life.

_If only Astrid's radar had had a less restrictive targeting envelope, she could have started with infrared…_

Hiccup had an idea.

=O=

"Oh dear god! Hiccup's having another one of his ideas! We gotta go check this out!

Astrid blanched, ran out of the officer's club into the freezing night, and hopped onto a boxy Dodge pickup truck bound for the flightline. Hiccup was a good engineer and apparently an excellent manager – heck, since he'd shown up, readiness rates had gone through the roof, and her radar had never worked so well – but he occasionally got a little too enthusiastic with the equipment.

The pickup truck passed by the open hangar door. Astrid felt a pulse of heat flash across her face, and the pickup suddenly skidded to a halt.

Snotlout, at the wheel, sounded somewhat shaken. "What the heck was that?"

Astrid turned towards the open hangar – and saw Stormfly. Someone had removed her nose, exposing her big MA-1 radar – apparently for some kind of test.

The someone is question was probably a very concerned-looking Hiccup Haddock, who was taking glances at the instruments on his support cart and pressing buttons in quick succession.

Reacting on instinct, Astrid charged across the tarmac, grabbed a spare fire extinguisher, and ran towards Stormfly, just in time to see a lick of flame emerge from the avionics.

She doused the entire radar block in fog until the extinguisher was empty.

"Hiccup, what the heck did you do to Stormfly?!"

Hiccup looked just as angry as she did. "Me? You're the ones who ignored the cones and ran out in front of a working radar!"

Astrid felt somewhat sick.

Hiccup chewed his lip. "You'll be fine! You were in the beam for like a second, and inside a metal box."

"You nearly fried us, man!" Tuffnut had finally caught up to her, and Snotlout wasn't far behind.

Hiccup turned back to his instruments, and waved his arm dismissively. "I put out cones!"

Snotlout grabbed Hiccup's shirt with one arm, and jabbed a finger in his chest with the other. "It's Friday night! You're supposed to be at the club or something, not shooting a radar at lord knows what!"

"Hughes was testing an experimental ground clutter reduction box. I had to try it out!"

Astrid was incredulous. "On my plane? Couldn't you have used the test rig?"

Hiccup threw his hands in the air. "You people drove thirty meters in front of an operating radar and burned out the receiver! If I hadn't shut everything down as quickly as I had, we'd be looking at a lot more damage than this."

Astrid fumed. Stormfly would be out of commission for a week while the ground crew waited on spare parts. "We're practically at war! We need every bird we can get, Hiccup! This isn't helping! And cones? At night? Really? Did you even think to prepare a fire extinguisher?"

Hiccup did a double-take. "Yeah, we're at war. Which means we roll out upgrades to the fleet as fast as possible!"

Snotlout punched him in the gut. "You _prick_! First there was the new IRST! Piece of crap display that kept distracting me from my controls! Then you put in the new radar – which broke twice on me while I was pulling high gees – and then there was the new flight computer! I nearly died when that thing failed on a combat mission!"

Snotlout spat on Hiccup as he doubled over in pain. "All you care about is your stupid state-of-the-art wire boxes! You get to sit here safe and sound while we risk our lives on untested voodoo magic black boxes that you insist on putting in every one of our new birds before they work properly!"

Astrid felt that the claim was somewhat unfair. She knew the squadron had fewer bugs than the squadron next door when it came to new gear, and Hiccup always got them first dibs on the stuff to boot.

But Stormfly was out of commission for a week.

"Just get Stormfly flying again. And no more of… all of this." Astrid gestured to Hiccup and the smoking multimillion-dollar radar set, and stormed off into the night.

=O=

Hiccup walked dejectedly into the darkened hanger. Noting the glum look on his subordinate's face, Gobber hobbled over to Hiccup, his prosthetic leg - a parting gift from the Imperial Japanese surface-to-air missile technicians who had blasted Gobber's Thunderchief from the skies of Korea – pinging against the concrete.

"Had a run-in with Astrid again, eh, Lieutenant? You've got to get your mind off her, lad! Live a little." Gobber sighed. "Youth doesn't last forever, you know."

Hiccup said nothing.

Gobber shrugged. "This came in for you."

Hiccup's eyes widened at the sight of the Air Force Personnel Center emblem on the envelope.

Gobber frowned. "That not-a-war in Bengal – sorry, East Pakistan, is that what they're calling it these days? – is heating up. My old Thunderchief buddies say that people are being actually getting shot down. It might just turn out to be the Siberian meat-grinder all over again."

Gobber's voice dropped to a whisper. "Are you really sure you want to stick that wonderful brain of yours into harm's way, Hiccup? The Air Force needs good systems engineers as much as it needs fighter pilots, you know."

Hiccup stopped in his tracks.

Gobber sighed. "Hiccup… flying fighters – especially in this whole "not-a-war" - isn't going to make Astrid fall in love with you. And there are easier ways to communicate with your father. I myself have found talking to be of great…"

Hiccup ripped the letter open, read it, and tossed it away with a grunt.

Gobber picked it up, and began to read it in an officious tone. "Ahem. Lieutenant Hiccup H. Haddock the Third, your request for transfer to fighter school in preparation for a combat posting in South Asia has been denied because of outstanding strategic priorities… Aerospace Defense Command blah blah blah… physical aptitude blah blah blah…"

Gobber crossed his arms with a knowing smirk. Hiccup turned towards him. "Did you do this? Did dad…"

"No lad. This is why they turned down your request." Gobber grabbed a manila envelope from a convenient table, and handed its contents to Hiccup. "New orders? What the heck…"

Gobber chuckled. "I told you you just had to wait your turn. They were buying the birds en masse, and since ADC is mostly single seat, they're a little short on flight-qualified engineers for backseat." _And you're one of the best. Just needed to wait for another Lieutenant to show up and take your spot. _

Hiccup began laughing. "I'm going to fly! I'm actually going to fly in a Blackbird!"

Gobber waved a dismissive arm. "Don't get ahead of yourself. It's backseat."

Hiccup wagged his finger. "At Mach 3.3, Gobber. At Mach 3.3."

=O=

"To making ace!"

The collected fighter pilots clinked their bottles, and began downing their beers. Astrid finished her swig, and put down her second empty bottle of Tsingtao.

Someone turned on the jukebox, and Astrid began tapping her foot to _Heartbreak Hotel_ as it blared across the room. She wasn't too fond of the new rock n' roll fad, and Presley was probably as pinko-commie as they came, but it wasn't bad to listen to. She looked around the room – and turned to Tuffnut.

While he had partaken in the cheer, Tuffnut looked less than enthusiastic as he nursed his beer.

Astrid cocked her head at her wingman."Sorry you didn't make the cut, Tuff."

Tuffnut smiled. "Well, someone has to train up the new guys when you guys leave. There are a lot of tricks they don't teach you in fighter school."

Astrid smirked. "And don't we know it."

Snotlout snorted. "Oh please. All the best pilots are going to the Blackbirds. With Blackbirds owning the skies, Delta Darts are going to be gap fillers."

Astrid glared, but Snotlout felt no need to back off. "It's what they call a Hi-Lo mix. We're going to be the High part – cause we're the expensive, awesome heavy hitters, and at 80,000 feet – and you're going to be the low part – the cheap part of the force that gives us bulk and numbers, you know, so the enemy has more targets to shoot at and won't hit the High part as hard…"

"I'll show you who hits hard!" Tuffnut sprang to his feet and threw a punch at Snotlout. Snotlout tumbled to the floor, clutching his nose. Quick as a flash, Astrid kicked Snotlout in the rear… pushing him just far enough so that Tuffnut's stomp landed on the floor instead of on Snotlout's ribs. "Calm down, Tuff. Jorgenson's just being an asshole."

Tuffnut glared at Snotlout. "Oh is he now? Cause you know, the Blackbird is a two-man jet. I hope your assholery lands you in deep crap, Jorgenson. I hope your backseater gets so sick and tired of you he becomes your… backstabber! How about that! Or, oh, oh… I hope you get the worst backseater ever, and never get to shoot anything down." Tuffnut spat.

Astrid looked thoughtful.

Tuffnut continued his somewhat disorganized rant. "Yeah… Aerospace Defense is so short of backseaters, we're even letting engineers like Hiccup without a drop of fighter pilot blood in their veins fly backseat! So good luck with that!"

=O=


	3. Political and Diplomatic Gestures

Chapter 3

Portland National Capital Region

Joint Government

The tiny motorcade wound its way through the broad avenues of the capital. Just another limousine escorted by a pair of police motorcycles, in a city overflowing with bureaucrats and officials, dignitaries and functionaries, politicians and staffers.

Stoick Haddock peered through the tinted windows of the limo as the city cruised by. Between pagoda-topped art-deco skyscrapers and modernist glass-and-steel edifices, between masonry apartments with sweeping glaze-tiled roofs and boring blocks of concrete domiciles, a bewildering array of shops, markets, and restaurants hawked their wares to hordes of pedestrians. On a street corner, a man stir-fried chestnuts in a huge, smoking, wok, the frayed tubing of his liquefied natural gas container of no concern to the gathered crowd. Next to him, another hairy-chested man worked his grill, stacked to the brim with squid-on-a-stick.

Not much different from Houston, or Seattle, or Shanghai, or Guangzhou, or any of the other great cities of the Joint Government, really. In New York, the grill might be selling hot dogs, and in Guangzhou, curried fishballs. All on sticks, of course.

Back in Beijing, before the war, Stoick had had the good fortune to be stationed a block away from the second-best lamb-on-a-stick stand in Hebei Province (or so the vendor proclaimed). The kebab man had nigh-perfected his art, coating juicy, tender mutton strips with just enough cumin to excite the palate while letting the natural flavor of mutton shine. And every time he brought Hiccup to the stall, the kebab man would always prepare a special kebab just for his son, with a little less cumin on the front end. Because Hiccup could never finish a whole kebab, and Stoick would have to eat the rest.

It was all gone now. The kebab stand, his old base, the old house – the Japanese had razed them all to the ground, along with most of Beijing, during their long retreat. Valka never wrote. And Hiccup… never wrote either. All he had left was this job, an empty apartment, and ulcers for his trouble.

His stomach growled.

The other occupant of the car tittered. "You know, we have a phone in the car. I could call the kitchen, and have them whip something up." The slim, raven-haired young woman gestured to a corded phone on the divider.

Stoick adjusted the tie on his dress uniform. "Oh, that won't be necessary, Ms. Heather. I wouldn't want to impose."

Heather shook her head. "Suit yourself. And you can call me Heather."

The motorcade crossed the fast-flowing waters of the Columbia River.

Beyond the skyscrapers, bridges, and high-voltage power lines, Stoick could just make out the cone of Mt. Hood.

Huh. He thought it'd have been bigger.

Heather caught his disappointed sigh. "First time in Portland, General Haddock? Yeah, we think it's pretty middle-of-the-road too."

Portland had been a compromise decision – a sleepy backwater of a town with rice paddies, a somewhat-navigable river, and a barely traversable trail over the Rockies, chosen for its equidistance from the wealthy centers of Ming-era colonial power at Golden Gate and Vancouver.

The motorcade barreled through the checkpoint at the old city wall, and screeched to a halt before a curtain of ornamental bamboo plants. _Mmm… pickled bamboo shoots in chili oil… _

Stoick took deep, measured breaths as Heather led him past bamboo displays, a zig-zagging bridge over a lotus pond (_mmm… lotus seeds_), and decorative gazebos.

He tried to remember the sheer terror he had felt, back in the cramped cockpit of his Thunderchief, every time they went feet dry over Honshu. He tried to remember the ribbons of flak that had chased him across the sky over Tokyo, of the SAM that had nearly gotten him over the Japanese redoubt at Pusan – and the other SAM that had gotten his wingman.

He had survived fifty sorties over the Home Islands. He could survive anything.

The gardens ended. Beyond a plain, open lawn stood the white marbled walls of a mansion – a neoclassical building, with obvious Greco-roman influences. The somewhat incongruous structure had been built a century and a half ago, after the original wood-and-stone palace was gutted in the Great Fire of Portland.

They walked right in.

=O=

"…none of their flights have gone past their claim lines since the shootdown. The Indians aren't as unafraid of war as they claim, Mr. Secretary."

Stoick and Heather scurried into the meeting room, careful to avoid General Kwok's gaze, and took up spots near the back.

The Secretary shook his jowls. "General, the fundamentals of the situation are the same as they were before the shootdown: that wasteland is not worth a war. We stick to the plan: hold in the west, give ground in the east. They'll get to declare victory, see sense, and drop their unreasonable demand for both territories. We keep our highway; they get their wasteland."

The Secretary of foreign affairs, a former naval officer, had spent his entire political life navigating byzantine provincial politics – and he'd done it so well that he'd gotten a cabinet position in under a decade. He'd fit Foreign Affairs like a glove.

And he also knew, from experience, that intuition could not be allowed to override the decision trees and cost-benefit calculi of armies of analysts.

"It's _our_ wasteland!" the General roared.

The Secretary nodded. "Damn right it is. But it's not worth a fight. The analytics are clear: we have to compromise in the interest of good neighborliness. You have to see the bigger picture."

The General harrumphed. "This lily-livered appeasement is a mistake. They're just going to come back for more, and more, and more. As for the big picture – you can bet that the Soviets are using this to test how we would react to a takeover of Berlin. It's a test of will, Mr. Secretary. The world is watching."

The Secretary crossed his arms. "And what happens when we start killing Soviet technicians and Soviet advisors, General? What happens if the Indians escalate with a massive, Soviet-backed invasion of West Pakistan, or march on Karachi? What will the world see then?"

"Hellfire." A raspy voice emerged from the other side of the room. "Nuclear hellfire."

A hulking giant of a man stepped forward from the edge of the room. Nonregulation dreadlocks spilled from his head almost to the three stars on the shoulders of his Air Force service uniform.

The Secretary smiled. "General Bludvist! Please do continue - you're illustrating my point better than I could!"

The room fell silent.

General Drago Bludvist took great pains to growl every word. "Gentlemen, as you know, you have no… ability to oppose a massive Indian invasion of Pakistan."

Stoick nodded. With the cuts to conventional forces, the ground-pounders were running on a shoestring. Facing half a dozen Soviet Tank Armies, JG Army Europe had barely enough tanks to cover a hasty retreat to the English Channel. But holding ground had never been the point of JG Army Europe.

Drago began to walk theatrically around the room, and the chamber seemed to hush with every footfall. "The… survival… of Pakistan is a core… national interest. So… if the Indians invade, and the Soviets… back them, we… Strategic Air Command… will launch a massive attack on the Soviet Union. Massive retaliation."

He twirled a large binder almost like one would a staff. The cover said it all: SIOP. "I have here in my hands… the plans… the codes… the orders! …to unleash 4,000 bomber sorties and missile strikes… on 20,000 Indian, Russian, and East European targets… totaling over 50,000 megatons… of thermonuclear hellfire."

Drago grinned - a nasty, toothy grin. "The Soviets can't match that. They might kill… 150 million Pacificans with their few… ballistic missiles, and with the fallout. But that's… a tenth of us. We can kill… ninety percent of them. We can kill… them all. And they know it. So… they will not invade."

The Secretary nodded. "Right. Thank you, General…"

Drago spoke. "But if we are to… destroy… the Soviet Union… we must do it soon. Every day, the Soviets add more missiles… more H-bombs… more defenses our bombers must overcome. Over the next century, nuclear war… is inevitable. We must crush them _now_! When we are strong and they weak! And not later!" Drago was practically screaming.

Stoick shifted uncomfortably. Even amongst the publicly bomb-happy generals of Strategic Air Command (and they _had _to look bomb-happy to properly scare the Soviets), General Bludvist had a reputation for… excessive bloodlust.

General Kwok nodded approvingly. "The Reds are out to get us, Mr. Secretary – they got India, Iraq, Syria, Egypt – and they _nearly_ got Iran. And now they're out for Pakistan and, god forbid, the Province of Tibet! Once the Soviet war machine hooks up with India's half-billion people, we're going to be steamrollered – if we're not subverted from within first. The Soviet menace must be nipped in the bud. History will judge…"

The Secretary's face reddened. "Right! So, since we are _not _genocidal mass murders, and _don't_ want to kill them all, or lose 150 million people, we don't want a war!"

He rubbed his chin. "You people will get a war _after_ they cross their claim lines in the east. A_ l__imited_ war. With engagement zones, red lines, the works! Because this Administration will _do_ _our __darnedest_ to make sure a damned border dispute over a shithole doesn't escalate to nuclear hellfire! Am I clear?!"

The gathered generals, and even the Secretary of Defense, nodded.

The Secretary sat down. "Good. Now that we're all more or less on the same page, let's get down to today's agenda. With the situation in India, the Administration has decided to activate SASCOM, and you all…" he gestured to the gathered generals, "have been tapped for the new command."

Admiral Yeung was the first to speak. "What's the point of South Asian Command? Why the hell can't PACCOM handle this? Or heck, let MAC-EP do it! They're already knee-deep in Indian insurgents!"

Stoick rolled his eyes. Pacific Command (PACCOM) was Navy turf through-and-through, and the Navy already had its greasy fingers all the way in Military Assistance Command East Pakistan (MAC-EP).

The Secretary sighed. "The decision has been made. And if I must repeat myself, nearly all SASCOM assets will be MAINCOM assets, not PACCOM ones." He flipped through a binder. "Item one for today: Air Force is lead service on this one. General Haddock will be in overall command. Objections?"

Stoick gulped as General Kwok rose to defend the Army's position on the matter.

=O=

The meeting had gone well. At the very least, there had been no additional shouting matches. And he, General Stoick Haddock, was now in charge of the entirety of South Asian Command. Over a division's worth of airborne and mountain troops, a few brigades of helicopters, a few Navy destroyers (hah!), and the Thirty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Air Forces were at his disposal. Well, kind of. For now, his forces existed mostly on paper, to be called in from other commitments as needed, and General Kwok was sure to keep his ground troops under his exclusive control if he could get away with it. And in the perverse reasoning of the military bureaucracy, General Bludvist would, during non-nuclear operations, be subordinate to him. Or perhaps that was bad news…

"General Stoick. One more thing." The Secretary gestured to Heather. "I'm sure you've met Agent Heather. She'll be your intelligence liaison at SASCOM. At the same time, she will report directly back to us, and keep us informed of your progress. Just to give the Administration a clearer picture of what's going on in those tall, faraway mountains."

Stoick glared at the Secretary. "I don't need a minder."

The Secretary gathered up his things, and headed for the door. "The decision has been made. Have fun working together."

=O=

_Author's note: Hiccup and Astrid will return to center stage in the following chapters. It is currently anticipated that the B-plot will be kept relatively bare-bones to minimize disruption to story flow. Suggestions, comments, and criticism are welcome - I enjoy hearing from my readers._

_Note that I am a mere interested amateur, and have aspired to convey generally accurate concepts rather than strive for 100% technical accuracy, for which I lack the technical and academic expertise. __The expert will doubtless find countless errors large and small. _

_The characters in-story certainly think their positions are reasonable - heck, they might even be right. __Readers are encouraged to think about __arguments presented and decisions made by either side in-story,__ and come to their own conclusions regarding their wisdom or lack thereof. The author cannot, of course, profess total neutrality, but I do try to give room for interpretation. :)_


	4. Cold War

Thanks to CajunBear73 and CommanderGreya for their reviews, encouragement and suggestions.

=O=

Chapter 4

Nellis Air Force Base

Nevada Province

Joint Government

"Keychain 9, bandit is at 75,000 feet, Mach 3.2, 153/100 Bullseye, closing fast."

Hiccup sighted the little blip amongst a huge swarm of green blips on his radar display – a big, thick, circular single-color cathode-ray tube. The light from the display and tape-measure-style instrument readouts were the only source of light in the darkness of the cockpit – the only source of information in Hiccup's claustrophobic little world.

His pressure suit's helmet ring chafed his chin, the blocky ejection seat was irritatingly lumpy, and he was sweating like mad inside the fully-enclosed helmet..

The bright orange, astronaut-like pressure suit was a necessity, he was told, if they lost cabin pressure or had to eject at 90,000 feet. Hiccup scoffed. As if he would _survive_ ejecting into the hellbrew that was the supersonic airflow around a Mach 3 aircraft.

A dot appeared on his screen. "I have target."

A waterfall of static washed across his screen. He was being jammed. Quick as a flash, he switched to another frequency. The jamming disappeared.

"I have lock."

A master alarm came on. Hiccup scanned his panel. "Main Bus C undervolt. Radar bus A undervolt. Battery D not responding. We have a battery fire in avionics bay one. Switching to Main Bus B. Shutting down battery D. I have regained lock."

Hiccup grinned. _I can do this all day. _

"We are in position." He had practically memorized the engagement envelopes of the huge AIM-47 Falcon missiles. While sharing a name with the old AIM-4s, the AIM-47s were much larger missiles – over twice as long – with a range exceeding a hundred kilometers – and they were talking about upgraded variants that could extend the range to two hundred kilometers... all the way to the radar detection limits. Oh, and the AIM-47 had a little radar inside it to target enemy warplanes.

"Fox three. Missile away."

'Fox one' meant launch of a receiver-only radar-guided missile, homing onto radar reflections from the warplane's big radar.

'Fox two' meant launch of an infrared heatseeker.

'Fox three' was new. It meant that someone had launched a really expensive missile – one with a little radar transmitter inside the missile itself, just like the radar on a warplane, capable of targeting enemy aircraft on its own.

The Falcon was such a missile.

He pictured the sleek Falcon missile streaking towards a notional supersonic Soviet bomber, detonating in a 1-kiloton atomic fireball – equivalent to a thousand tonnes (a "kiloton") of TNT - that engulfed the bomber completely.

"Splash!" There was no way a bomber would survive such an explosion.

He turned his attention back to his radar. _The sneaky bastards!_ While he had been hitting the bomber in the stratosphere, two hundred kilometers east, supersonic strike aircraft were sneaking into their airspace at treetop level!

Low altitude terrain-hugging – hiding from airborne radars in the ground clutter - would have worked against older radars, but the Blackbird had the world's first pulse Doppler look-down/shoot-down radar. Low altitude was no defense against the ultra-long-range AN/ASG-18. In theory, the big radar could pick up targets from the edge of space to treetop level at a range of two hundred kilometers.

"Viceroy, this is Keychain 9. We have multiple supersonic contacts inbound, Mach 1.2, altitude 150 feet, 120/34 bullseye. Moving to engage."

Hiccup worked his slide rule, quickly plotting an intercept course and jotting down their anticipated fuel status on the worksheet. The huge aircraft closed the hundred kilometers to missile range in ninety seconds.

"Lock. Fox three." A missile streaked towards the ground-hugging jets.

Was it really such a good idea to fire nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles at enemy aircraft flying 150 feet off the ground?

The missile detonated. Two bandits blinked off the screen.

Hiccup fired two more missiles, killing two additional bandits.

Two escaped.

Normally, four out of six wasn't too bad. But in a nuclear war, four out of six meant two Pacifican cities wiped off the map.

_Well, that answers the question about nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles. Better small nukes over the countryside than big nukes over a city. _

"Okay, Keychain 9. That's a mission failure, but you did good work. Simulation terminated." Hiccup exhaled, pushed the canopy of the simulator open, and strode into the hanger.

"You need to work on your situational awareness. We got you there when we snuck those terrain-followers up your alley."

Hiccup nodded. "Yeah. Need more practice switching between search and targeting."

"You also need landing practice. Trainer's outside. Be there in fifteen minutes."

Hiccup stared in awe at the F-12B Blackbird dominating the hangar – a machine that never ceased to amaze him. A multirole fighter derivative (technically a cousin) of the SR-71 Strike-Reconnaissance aircraft, the Blackbird was designed to cruise at Mach 3.3 at 70,000 feet and up.

The sleek, midnight-black aircraft exuded speed and power. Along the sides of its pointed nose and long fuselage, the tubular airframe flattened out into a pair of chimes, which provided stability to the aircraft and minimized radar reflections towards the enemy. To the rear, the Blackbird's two enormous cone-tipped J58 turbojets, each the girth of the fuselage, flanked the airframe, embedded in a sharply swept triangular (or "delta") wing.

Hiccup walked the thirty meters – two bus-lengths - from nose to tail, and doubled back to the avionics bay just behind the cockpit. God, the Blackbird was beautiful.

Soon, he would be flying in it – and fighting in it.

But to do that properly, he also needed to learn how to land the aircraft. The backseater needed to have basic flight qualifications too, just in case the pilot was incapacitated.

Heck, before starting here, he hadn't landed an aircraft in years. Time in a trainer was a godsend.

Hiccup hurried off to the waiting T-38 trainer – a small, quick, low-winged jet, gleaming white in the midday Nevada sun. He needed a lot of practice.

=O=

Astrid grinned as the TF-12A Blackbird trainer blew past Mach 2.8 with nary a shudder.

Most fighter aircraft, optimized for lower cost and performance at low altitude, could barely make Mach 2 – and they could stay at Mach 2 for only for a few minutes, while on full afterburner, _and_ while burning most of their fuel in the process. The F-12B (and its SR-71 cousins) could cruise at Mach 3 from New York to London in under ninety minutes without breaking a sweat.

Its speed and altitude put it out of reach of all but the biggest, heftiest and most expensive surface-to-air missile systems, which meant that things that could shoot down the Blackbird would be few in number, relatively immobile, and hopefully easy to kill. It also put it out of reach of most air-to-air missiles carried by interceptors.

Conversely, the F-12B Blackbird had the necessary performance to catch supersonic bombers as hard to kill as itself. So far, the JGAF's own B-70 Valkyrie (and the Blackbird itself) were the only such aircraft with performance worthy of the F-12B's attention, but the Soviets were hard at work building new superbombers and superfighters to counter the Pacificans. All agreed it was only a matter of time before the Blackbird would meet its match.

Instructor Tang – a wrinkly, heavily tanned woman with a gravelly voice and penchant for monotonic pronunciation – gave her a prod. "Steady, Astrid. This trainer cannot fly at the maximum speed. Now go up, and fly a racetrack pattern. Do turns."

Astrid pressed gently on the stick, chuckled as the trainer fluidly ascended to 70,000 feet, and was pressed into her seat as she went into a tight, smooth turn. At these speeds, Stormfly would shudder, creak, and generally handle like an aerodynamic brick, refusing to budge from a straight line unless Astrid pulled on the stick (and associated hydraulics) like a maniac. The Blackbird, creature of the high Machs, could actually maneuver at Mach 3, with an airframe that could pull two gees even as it withstood the hot supersonic airflow that buffeted the craft.

This spectacular performance gave the Blackbird a turn radius of a hundred and thirty _kilometers_, a ludicrously impressive figure for the high Machs.

The turn continued. Man, this was a long turn.

It took the Blackbird a total of six minutes to complete a half-turn, during which it would cover an area the size of Scotland.

Outside the tiny, heat-resistant triangular windows of the cockpit, the sky was deep indigo, fading to black as she looked up. The airflow rubbing against the airframe at a kilometer a second heated it up to 300 degrees Celsius – temperatures which would have fatally weakened aluminium, had it been used in the plane's construction.

Instead, the engineers had opted to build the entire thing out of titanium. Expensive though they were to produce and work with, titanium alloys were heat resistant, strong, and lightweight.

"Watch airspeed, Astrid. Open throttle, go to Mach 3. Keep your airspeed there while turning."

Just like the simulator.

Astrid gunned the engines. Behind her, the huge J58 turbojets roared with renewed ferocity, laughing in the face of the howling supersonic winds as they slurped air in through their cone-tipped inlets and blasted it from nozzles lined with interleaved superalloy feathers.

The J58s were marvels of space-age engineering. After the air sucked into the inlets was slowed to digestible speeds by the conical inlet spikes, the J58's superpowerful compressor fans would go to work, compressing the air and feeding it into the combustion chamber. Here, in a chamber lined with the most heat-resistant alloys known to man, tonnes of air were mixed with gallons of special JP-7 fuel every second, and the explosive concoction ignited in an incandescent inferno. Roaring rearwards, the expanding hellbrew drove a series of magnificently crafted turbines, each blade a single shard of the purest metal alloy crystal, which in turn drove the compressor fans through a shaft, keeping the inferno happily fed with compressed air. Past the blades, the superheated gas was mixed with yet more JP-7 and additional air, diverted from the engine stream up forward, and ignited in an afterburner before blasting out the rear of the aircraft in a spectacular, gigantic rocket-like plume, shock diamonds shooting down its length, producing the enormous thrust and spectacular performance needed for supersonic flight.

The next turn was perfect, and Astrid was able to keep her airspeed steady throughout the six minute country-sized turn.

"Can I do a barrel roll in this thing?"

"Not with me inside. That is enough for today; the fuel is low."

=O=

"Okay, Lieutenant, there's the runway. Steady."

A bang rocked the aircraft, a dash of red and a spiderweb of fractures suddenly appeared on the window, and the engine made an unusual sound.

"What the heck was that?" Hiccup began looking around nervously.

"Birdstrike. I have the controls. Crap. I can't see the runway. Tower, this is Blanco 41, we've had a birdstrike. We're blind." Hiccup looked up. The upper canopy – which the instructor needed to see through - was a complete mess.

_That thing could have killed me. If it had just hit a single foot lower… _

Hiccup squinted out the untouched lower canopy. "I can see the runway. I can take us in. I did it yesterday, didn't I?"

The instructor's voice went up an octave. "Okay. Handing over controls to student."

Hiccup took a deep breath. _Here goes… _

The master alarm went off, and Hiccup's eyes went wide as failure lights seemed to flash all over his dashboard. "Hydraulics failure. We can't land on this …"

"We've got a number two engine fire. Shutting down number two engine. Tower, we're ejecting. Turn towards the salt flats."

Hiccup brought the aircraft towards the salt flats… just in time to see a Blackbird head towards him. He banked his trainer hard, and fought the urge to slam his eyes shut as the Blackbird pulled away in his canopy.

"The other salt flats, you dummy!" The instructor seemed as scared as he did.

Hiccup groaned.

They glided over the salt flats. "Prepare to eject. Three. Two. One. Eject."

Hiccup felt the world spin as he was thrown away from his burning aircraft, and saw the world jerk to a halt as his parachute opened.

Then Hiccup just hung there, a wriggling little human dangling beneath a thin nylon canopy under a brilliant blue cloudless sky, caught between white salt flats, endless sandy desert and the outskirts of Las Vegas.

=O=

Astrid kept her eyes on the runway as she came in to land.

_Okay. Steady. Check your airspeed, not too low… a nice, clean…_

"Aspen 17, please be advised, Blanco 41 has just had a birdstrike…"

_Woah! _Out of nowhere, a white streak flashed by Astrid's world. Acting on instinct, Astrid took the Blackbird into a sharp turn, hoping to avoid a mid-air collision.

_Still handling like a pig at low altitude check airspeed check altitude. Too low too low too low can't land this one. Open throttle. Check altitude. More throttle…._

The Blackbird levelled off, and her heart began pounding as thirty seconds of repressed terror began to seep through the adrenaline.

Holy crap. She had nearly died – in a damned training accident. She didn't know much, but she'd kill the idiot who'd plowed into her airspace because he or she panicked during an emergency.

Her second go-around was completely uneventful, and she made a picture-perfect landing.

She walked out of the shower room just in time to see a pickup truck drop off a pilot.

And one somewhat shaken-looking Hiccup Haddock.

Astrid stormed up to Hiccup, her hands balled into fists. "You! Did you seriously plow into a descent lane? You almost got me killed back there! If you don't have what it takes to fly, just stay on the ground!"

=O=

Astrid stormed off before Hiccup could say a word.

The instructor shook his head. "Relax, kiddo. Our engine was on fire, and we had bad hydraulics. Inexperienced pilot. I should have made the turn. Review board'll let you off easy."

Astrid didn't seem to agree.

=O=

Hiccup yawned as he stepped into the dry morning air. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he strode over to the silvery wall of mailboxes (well, mail-cubbies) that lay astride the entrance to the building.

Going to get the mail in one's pajamas might have seemed odd to some, but his orders would come through any day now, and Hiccup would be damned if he had to wait one more unnecessary minute in agonizing uncertainty for the news.

He retrieved his mail, and ripped open the first envelope. He raised an eyebrow as he read the document.

He had his orders.

It was all happening so fast. Usually, they gave pilots and backseaters thirty more hours in a training aircraft after they qualified, to break them in before shipping them out to operational squadrons. But between the crisis in Berlin and the situation on the Indian border, Aerospace Defense Command needed qualified F-12B crews now, hours or no hours.

For the last month, training for the entire class had been truncated, compressed, and simplified, and the day before, practically the entire class of backseaters had been declared qualified for flight operations, and told to await assignment to operational squadrons. Hiccup pitied the class after them, who by all accounts were being railroaded through the training process to keep up with accelerating Blackbird production.

Ironically, the bottleneck for the Blackbird weapons system was not production of the fantastically complex twenty-million-dollar* supersonic interceptors, or their nuclear-tipped missiles, but rather training enough pilots to fly them. All the more reason, he supposed, for building expensive planes. What point was a cheap plane when pilots were so expensive?

The noise of marching footsteps reverberated through the common room. Someone – probably the drunk lieutenant sleeping off a celebratory binge on the couch – had left the TV on.

In black-and-white, row upon row of Soviet tanks, huge guns protruding from squat, dome-shaped turrets, stood at attention, their crews at the ready. Row upon row of flat infantry fighting vehicles and angular armored personnel carriers followed, intermixed with ranks of heavily-armed infantrymen, Kalashnikovs bared.

"The Red Army. Two hundred and fifty divisions. Five million men. One hundred thousand tanks. Three thousand nuclear missiles. Poised to strike at the drop of a hat."

The TV now showed Red Square, where vast crowds cheered wildly as columns of missile trailers trundled by a review stand, while waves of turboprop bombers and jet fighters roared overhead.

"Communism has one goal: World Domination. As we speak, Communist infiltrators and subversives are using every means at their disposal to overthrow elected governments and undermine institutions around the world, including our own. Once violent revolution has been fomented, Communist dogma holds that the Red Army, as the so-called shield of the world revolution of the proletariat, will march forth, and crush what opposition remains to totalitarian Communist rule."

Images of squat tanks running through the streets of Budapest played across the screen.

"It has happened before. Scarcely ten years ago, paralyzed by Communist subversion, coups, and violent uprisings, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia opened their gates to the Red Army."

A balding man appeared on a podium – Hiccup recognized it as the United Nations auditorium. He picked up his shoe, and began to bang it against the podium. "We will bury you!"

"We are next."

The video cut to images of the Soviet-Pacifican trade conference. Even with tensions as high as they were, the Administration continued to allow the import of over a billion barrels of Soviet oil every year, on the grounds that it was essential for the economic health – and hence for the security - of the nation. Nevermind that lend-lease was history, or that the Soviets were using mountains of hard currency to build their war machine.

"But the spineless businessmen of the Administration have…"

Hiccup walked up to the TV and turned off the political ad. He had enough to worry about.

=O=


	5. Weapons System

_Finally_ got Chapter 5 done after three exceedingly busy RL weeks! Thanks to CajunBear73, LongLiveOurKing, Stingray10111, atomicsub927, and Grim for their commentary and input.

=O=

Chapter 5

Berk AFB

Hiccup walked towards the F-12B. Unlike the seemingly combat-ready aircraft he had seen in the hangar on the day of his ejection, this particular Blackbird appeared a complete mess. Wires spilled from its nose, avionics bay, and weapons bays along its flanks, terminating on all manner of doilies and carts.

His Blackbird.

Well, it wouldn't be exclusively his. Aircraft were always cycling in and out of maintenance, and operational F-12B squadrons were to be double-manned (well, once the training program got into full gear), with twice as many crew as the ultra-expensive supersonic jets had seats – all the better to amortize the ludicrous expense of the aircraft. No, he and his pilot – _whoever he or she was_ \- would be assigned _their_ jet whenever feasible, but if a mission came up and the bird was unavailable – or kitted out for another mission - they would be given whatever aircraft was fit for mission.

_This_ bird was his regardless.

A slightly out-of-shape, fair-skinned Han-Pacifican in a blue jumpsuit marched up to him. "Captain Hiccup Haddock, I presume?"

Hiccup nodded. As if to inspect the officer, the maintainer rubbed his square jaw. He cracked into a grin and saluted. "Sergeant Peter Lui reporting for duty, sir. I'll be the maintenance chief in charge of your bird." He turned around. "Hey boys! Come meet the new backseater!" A veritable army of maintainers saluted and introduced themselves, and Hiccup once more felt a little out-of-place amongst the dozens of enlisted personnel.

Sergeant Lui shrugged. "Your bird is tail number 57083…"

"And what a bird she is, too!" A voice rang out from behind Hiccup, and he heard the gentle clink of metal on concrete.

"Gobber!" Hiccup spun around, and gave Gobber a friendly hug. "I'm so happy to see you! I have no idea how I got reassigned back to Berk, but… here I am!" Hiccup scratched his head. "Uhh, Gobber, this is Sergeant Peter Lui, my bird's new crew chief; and this is his team…"

Gobber and Lui both laughed. "Are you daft, boy? I run maintenance on this base; we know each other already! Big Pete, do continue. Show those young 'uns what we're made of."

Big Pete, _apparently_, continued. "57083 flew in here two weeks ago. We've done the standard preflight inspections, and she's gone out for a spin with a couple of the old hands. Flight handling's pretty good, but the stab-aug's a bit off. Engines work like a charm. She has the new expansion sealant they're using on the F-12Bs, so she doesn't leak."

Big Pete furrowed his brow. _Now for the bad news. _"The main problem with 57083 is her pulse Doppler radar. The AN/ASG-18A…" he waved to the boringly-named big satellite-dish-stuck-to-a-box on the cart. "…on this bird is wonky, so far as we can tell since it arrived here. The ground mapping shorts out occasionally, and the Doppler suite just doesn't work reliably. She can't drop bombs, look-down or shoot-down until we fix it."

Hiccup frowned. "So she's practically toothless." He walked over to the bookcase. "Let me check the records for that thing."

Big Pete handed him a thick binder. "That's the unit. From factory to yesterday." Hiccup began to leaf through the binder.

Waves emitted by or reflected off objects moving towards or away from the wave are changed – lengthened or shortened - by the moving object – a phenomenon known as the Doppler Effect. The Doppler effect is responsible for the change in pitch of an ambulance siren as it passes observers on the sidewalk; the pitch of the siren tends to rise as it approaches and falls when it departs. It is also responsible for the redshift (wavelength increase) and blueshift (wavelength decrease) of light from distant galaxies seen as they pull away from or scream towards the Milky Way Galaxy.

By determining which radar returns were lengthened or shortened, the Doppler radar could and would distinguish returns from fast-moving aircraft (which would have Doppler shifted radar returns) from stationary ground clutter (the radar returns from which, discounting the motion of the Blackbird, would exhibit no Doppler shift). This allowed it to track and engage terrain-hugging enemy aircraft and cruise missiles – so long as they were moving towards or away from the radar.

That is, if it was working properly – which it apparently wasn't.

Hiccup nodded, grabbed a pen, and began writing in the binder. "Here's the extra test series I want you to run the thing through. This should allow you to troubleshoot a few possibilities that the standard tests miss. If that doesn't work, come find me… I mean, go find the new systems engineer."

Gobber chuckled. "What did I tell you, Big Pete. This one's a keeper!" He turned to Hiccup. "New systems engineer is Lieutenant James Pong. He's pretty good, and we're all still shipshape. You can stop holding your breath."

Hiccup realized that he had indeed been holding his breath.

Big Pete gave a low whistle. "Not a bad plan, sir. I'll see what I can do. Sorry about the mess with the radar."

Hiccup waved him off. "Nah. It isn't your fault. When they designed the radar, they thought they were building a pure air-to-air radar for an interceptor to shoot down fighters and bombers with. Then someone at Lockheed had the bright idea to push the program through Congress by making the F-12B a multi-role, do-anything aircraft, with interchangeable modules for different missions. And so the engineers had to redesign the radar for navigation and precision bombing in addition to a counter-air role. Oh, and it had to be modular, too."

Big Pete chuckled. "Mmm-hmm. One more thing, sir. 57083 doesn't have a name yet. What do you want to name her?"

Hiccup raised an eyebrow. "Me?"

"Yeah, it's a backseater's privilege. What with you liaising with the ground crew and all."

Hiccup drew a blank, and Big Pete continued. "Well, on-base, we've got Supersonic Sue, Snake Eyes, uhhh… that bird over there's Greased Lightning…"

Hiccup nodded. Big Pete shrugged. "You can take your time with the name. Just try to get it to me by Wednesday, okay? I'll need some time to prepare the stencils."

Hiccup walked away from the airframe, falling into the slow amble that allowed Gobber to keep pace. "So, how was backseat training? Nevermind, you can tell me all about it at the Officer's Club! Let's celebrate!"

Hiccup smiled, and allowed himself to relax as Gobber began jabbering on about his new engineer.

He was back in Berk, and all was right with the world.

=O=

Gobber chuckled. "So… get this… they thought pilots with flight experience in an area would fight better if they were reassigned back to that same area after retraining!"

Hiccup laughed. "Seriously?! What are we, the Army? It's not like 'knowing the terrain' works at 70,000 feet! And I never flew over 'em anyway."

Gobber shrugged. "Well, you know the _human _terrain better, that's for sure. Who knows what goes through the heads of those crazy Portlanders?"

Hiccup had barely pushed open the door to the Officer's Club when Snotlout's grating voice rang in his ear once more.

"Hey look! Hiccup's back… with combat experience! He got shot down by a chicken!"

Gobber looked at Hiccup with a raised eyebrow. Hiccup shrugged. "Birdstrike. Had to eject." Gobber nodded knowingly, and Hiccup turned back to Snotlout. "You do realize chickens can't fly, right?"

Gobber rolled his eyes. That stubborn little… he just had to give Snotlout more reasons to escalate, didn't he?

Snotlout took a swing at Hiccup, knocking him to the floor. Hiccup groaned, and Snotlout stood over him. "Yeah, it's true. Hiccup here couldn't handle a dinky little trainer after it got hit by a dinky little bird, panicked, and nearly crashed into a Blackbird…"

Hiccup gasped as he tried to stand. "We all flew those trainers, birdbrain."

Snotlout ignored the dork on the floor, and twisted the knife. "In addition to nearly destroying a multimillion dollar combat aircraft, Hiccup very nearly managed to kill one of the best pilots in the Air Force, our very own Astrid Hofferson!"

Hiccup froze mid-stance, and the noise in the room seemed to dry up.

"And even after his monumental screw-up, Hiccup H. Haddock _the Third_ still gets off scot-free - heck, he gets a promotion to Captain for incompetence - all because his daddy is a general." Conveniently forgetting his own father, a Colonel at Aerospace Defense Command, Snotlout sneered as he delivered his coup de grace.

"Who here thinks Hiccup deserves an ass-whuppin'?"

Eyes shifted around the room, but nobody said a word.

Gobber stepped forward. "Okay, _Lieutenant _Jorgenson_, _that's enough. Hiccup is not the one looking for a fight here. If you want to blow off some steam, find someone else."

Snotlout took a glance at Gobber, gritted his teeth, and stomped off.

Hiccup sighed with relief, and began to back away towards the door. "I'll… just be going then."

=O=

Hiccup, sandwich in hand, strode back into the darkened hanger.

He walked up to his Blackbird, and ran his fingers along the edge of a chime. "Hey… so I'm back early."

He flipped through Big Pete's manual, and walked over to the big radar. "Toothless." He shook his head.

"Well, since I've got nothing better to do tonight, I might as well try out a few tests. Shouldn't take too long."

=O=

"Captain? Captain? What the heck are you doing here on a Saturday morning?!"

Hiccup awoke with a start, practically jumping out of the makeshift cot he had cobbled together from a weapons trolley and a folded-up tarp. "Oh! Big Pete! Yeah. Was just running a few simple tests on the radar last night… you know, pave the way for your test regimen today."

Big Pete tilted his head. "And how goes the paving?"

Hiccup nodded as he shook the sleep from his eyes. "Good, good. I think I know where the problem is, but I need your team for a full test. If my hunch is right, ol' toothless over here is gonna have teeth by the end of the week."

Big Pete nodded. "Is that what you're calling her? Toothless?"

Hiccup looked thoughtful.

Big Pete looked quizzically at Hiccup, who shrugged. "It… seems to have stuck."

Big Pete shrugged right back. "I'll get the stencil ready."

=O=


	6. Don't Rock the Boat Threshold

Thanks to CajunBear73, LongLiveOurKing, and Blackberry Avar for their reviews and input.

=O=

Chapter 6

Disputed Area

Heather stepped out the door of the outpost into the harsh Himalayan wind, grateful for the forest-green parka of her loaned Border Patrol uniform (there being no point to tipping off the Indians that anyone special was visiting the Border Patrol outpost). She walked briskly towards the waiting helicopter – a twin-rotor cargo helo with MOUNTAIN RESCUE painted prominently on its bright orange fuselage.

Around her, a treeless landscape of jagged hills and broad valleys stretched to the horizon, carpeted in sand, gravel, and a sparse layer of hardy grasses just thick enough to trick the eye into thinking that the gravel-strewn hills were green. A dirt road wound by the lonely outpost, disappearing into the hills beyond.

A Border Patrol agent winced as she staggered out onto the permafrost. Heather rushed to prop her up as the agent nearly tripped, warily avoiding the barrel of the WWII-era self-loading battle rifle slung over her shoulder.

"Sorry, ma'am. Still not fully healed."

Heather nodded as she stepped past a pile of vandalized metal border markers, uprooted by Indian troops. All of the Border Patrol agents at the outpost bore scuffle marks – a bruised eye here, a broken nose there – from literal fistfights with Indian troops.

The Administration had placed Border Patrol front and center in the dispute. Armed with little more than nightsticks, badges, and obsolete rifles, Border Patrol had been tasked with confronting every Indian advance – but with no more force than shoving matches, and with express instructions to yield ground after every confrontation.

Much ground had been yielded.

The Indians had still seen fit to shoot six Border Patrol agents at this very outpost, sending two home in body bags, in an apparent bid to intimidate Border Patrol into withdrawing faster. Heck, to drive home the point, they'd even buzzed the responding Mountain Rescue chopper with fast jets.

She looked at the outpost again. Two shipping containers, a tent, and a flagpole.

Expendable. Just like the border patrolmen, their run-down truck, and the grey-green hills.

It all made perfect sense. Using Border Patrol instead of Army kept the dispute _civil_, and kept the Army from looking like a pack of cowards in the papers as ground was inevitably yielded to the Indians.

Border Patrol gives ground, the Army holds it. The Administration hath spoken.

_Tell that to the families of the dead Border Patrol agents._

The Chinook helicopter (a recent donation from the Army to Mountain Rescue, complete with temporarily discharged crews) roared to life as she took her seat.

The worst part was that they should have seen this coming. She_ – _well, the picture put together by the various intelligence agencies - _had_ seen this coming. But Stoick's intelligence staff hadn't picked up anything, and Stoick had trusted his own staff over… well, her.

She gritted her teeth. This was not working. As an intelligence liaison, she needed Stoick's trust. But the damned Administration just _had_ to insist that she keep an eye on Stoick as well, and had rubbed it in to him in the least diplomatic way possible. Which, of course, had made her job impossible.

She gave a stiff nod to the waving Border Patrol agents as the Chinook began to rise into the clear blue sky.

=O=

Near SASCOM Headquarters

Jiegu, Qinghai Province, Joint Government of the Pacific

Heather grinned as the jeep sped along the winding mountain road, its twin headlamps piercing the night. She could see why he liked coming up here. Between the biting wind blasting through her hair and the need for supreme concentration at the wheel, she could hardly remember why she was up here, let alone contemplate her own circumstances.

Above her, stars glittered, twinkling brilliantly through the clear mountain air, and the beige rocks of the desert took on hues of grey, blue, and stark white.

She found him at the lookout.

Heather stepped out of the jeep, and admired the scattered lights of Jiegu. The mid-sized mountain town of 50,000, having filled the valley floor, extended halfway up its slopes. Near the center of the valley, cinderblock buildings spilled up and over prominent knolls as residents jostled for proximity to the town center. A dark line snaked across the town, marking the course of the Zhaqu River as it rushed inexorably towards the Yangtze.

Stoick continued to gaze across the valley, seemingly oblivious to her presence.

Heather followed his gaze – and found herself looking at the moon_. Probably thinking of his ex-wife, then, not the kid._

She coughed.

Stoick grunted. "You were right."

Heather sighed. "The whole incident was micromanaged from New Delhi – they bypassed everyone and went right down to the company commanders and flight leaders. Tactical intelligence wouldn't have picked it up, and we didn't have the full picture either." She paused. "And it wasn't _I _who was right. It was the senior and junior command post analysts, then me, and the whole damn intelligence apparatus behind us."

Stoick glared, and raised a finger to her chest. "Lass, if you think that I let our little… tiff compromise my judgment, you will find yourself sorely mistaken! We had five alerts in the past two weeks! And what could we possibly have done? Pulling border patrol back would only have gotten them killed in their outposts!"

Heather balled her fists. "You think I had much of a choice in the matter?!" She sighed. "But that's not important." She put her palms together. "We've got an impending war on our hands. You have a whole theater to manage. I have other duties. We don't have the luxury of playing games."

Stoick raised an eyebrow. "This coming from the woman who followed me up here?"

Heather rolled her eyes. "You never stop bragging about this place." She looked around dismissively. "It's cool and all, but if you want to see the stars, you really oughta go a ridge back, keep the city out of sight."

Stoick's eyes narrowed at her mention of stargazing.

She exhaled. "I'm here to bury the hatchet. I can't really stop sending reports, or let you see them."

She gulped. "But… I can tell you where your son is. Well… I could dig up where he's going to be, after he leaves Nellis in a couple of weeks. I know you know he's at Nellis now, but you don't know where he's going after that. And you don't have _that_ many reports across the Air Force. If you want… I can even get you in touch with your wife."

Stoick's pulse quickened. _Even seeing them again just once more..._

He shook his head. "I… can't accept your offer."

Heather frowned.

Stoick chuckled. _To see a spook puzzled. _"We just got our marching orders. We're being brought up to full strength!"

Heather blinked twice.

Even with barely any troops and no warplanes to command, SASCOM's last six months had been exceedingly busy ones. For half a year, the lives of Stoick and the legion of staff officers, clerks, and other essential staff that populated the big headquarters building had been dominated by the drudgery of endless planning cycles.

And her life had been dominated by them too.

Oh, the plans. Pocket history books made war sound so simple, so spontaneous. In the age of industrial warfare, with tens of thousands of men and hundreds of aircraft, armies and air forces could stumble through only by crafting endless plans. Sure, no plan survives contact with the enemy – but having a sound plan on hand to build a better one is vastly easier (and results in vastly _better_ plans) than coming up with something from scratch.

Plans for maneuver, plans for deception, billets and dispositions, contingency plans of every stripe. Sub-plans for each overarching plan. Logistics plans to ship, warehouse, and distribute on schedule thousands of tonnes of fuel, millions of shells, billions of bullets, and an innumerable array of spare parts. Train schedules, road allocation, airspace deconfliction. Communications plans, frequency allocations, codebooks. Plans for how to collect, distribute, and analyze intelligence on a national and theater level – which would pour through in a veritable torrent in an actual shooting war. And more, and more, and more.

It was really happening. The millions of pages in the basement filing cabinets were being turned into men, into steel, into fire, into blood.

Stoick exhaled as he examined the blank expression on Heather's face. "It's still a purely defensive operation at present. But well, the moment the Indians push Border Patrol all the way back to their claim line, they'll see Pacifican light infantry holding the hilltops." He turned back to the stars. "It's actually why I came up here tonight. We're all going to be very busy over the next few months – or however long it takes to sort this out. So no distractions until then. No late-night drives, no street food crawls, and certainly no family reunions."

He patted Heather on the shoulder. "So enjoy the view – while you still can."

Heather stared at the twinkling lights that carpeted land and sky, and breathed in deeply, allowing the cool mountain air to fill her lungs.

Stoick spoke. "And Heather? Thank you… for the offer. It means a lot to me."

=O=


	7. Historical Factors

Thanks to CajunBear73 for his review and input.

=O=

Chapter 7

Sixteen years earlier

Wuhan, Hubei Province, Joint Government of the Pacific

Astrid, the boys, and Kara, the family's littlest, huddled together under the big dinner table in complete darkness. The house was pitch black – not just because Astrid had turned off the electricity and gas stove, but also because the blackout curtains over the front windows blocked out any light from the street – not that there was much light to be found in blacked-out Wuhan.

The air raid sirens had been blaring for the past thirty minutes.

Astrid tensed as she leaned against the chicken-wire mesh of the cage shelter (what the Brits called a "Morrison shelter") – a big, sturdy mass-produced metal cage that the Hofferson family had shoved under the kitchen table in lieu of a proper air raid shelter. The great industrial city of Wuhan had little room for backyards, and basements just weren't quite fashionable in temperate Hubei.

Kara began to sob, and Astrid moved to give her a squeeze.

Astrid wished her parents were here. But mom was miles away, overseeing the night shift at the big, vertically integrated Ford plant on the Yangtze, making sure the machines that made the machines that killed Japanese ran smoothly and efficiently. And dad was... at the front. He obviously couldn't tell them for security reasons. Astrid closed her eyes, and imagined her father in the cockpit of his Sabrejet, somewhere over Inner Mongolia or Jiangsu or wherever the front was now, bearing down on a Mitsubishi jet fighter, guns blazing.

They'd moved to Wuhan with the big Ford plant six years ago, when she was five. Her father had taken a posting at the regional Air Force base, and the rest of them had settled in to life in Hubei – a life of good (if spicy) food, fireworks parties, and a maddeningly difficult bilingual education.

And then, just before Christmas last year, the Japanese Empire (with the reluctant, or so we are told, aid of their Manchurian and Korean subjects) invaded the Mainland Joint Government, overran the factories of the Northeast with their tank armies, conquered the Western Pacific Ocean with their carriers, and were by all accounts bearing down on the Yunnan-Burma railway, poised to cut off the Mainland's last connection to the critical industrial base of the North American Provinces.

If the Japanese were able to knock out the surviving industries of central China and cut the Yunnan-Burma railway, the Joint Government's forces on the Mainland would run out of the tanks, planes, guns, and other stuff needed to oppose the Japanese advance, and they would be slaves of the Japanese Empire forever. Which was why the Japanese were bombing Wuhan. Or at least that was how Astrid understood it.

In short, it meant that the Japanese were responsible for the cramp in her legs, the emptiness in her stomach (which never went away because the rations were never _quite_ enough), and the soft sobs coming from her little sister.

She gritted her teeth, and imagined herself flying high above the clouds, in one of those new Scorpion jet interceptors she saw on the newsreels, gunning down hordes of Japanese jet bombers with salvoes of rockets. With vengeful joy, she imagined the jet bombers spiraling to earth, their airframes shattered, their crews aflame. She'd make them all _pay_ for this. Someday.

Astrid sighed, and turned towards her favorite spot in the blacked-out house – the skylight. Over her mother's objections, Astrid always removed the cover from the skylight, allowing her to stargaze a little during air raids. She pulled her little sister closer. "Okay, Kara. Let's look at the stars. See? That's the Big Dipper right up there. If you draw a line through the two stars of the Big Dipper's front end, and follow it away from the bottom of the Dipper's bowl, you can find the North Star. So our window faces north!"

Kara nodded. "North Star is north."

"Very good, Kara."

A deep thump rang out in the night, causing the house to shake. Then another. And another.

_Pathfinders. They're laying down chaff, marking targets, and suppressing defenses. They always started with those._

Astrid frowned. The newsreels never talked about tactics in detail. A lot of it was classified, and besides, most citizens wouldn't understand it anyway.

_Wait a minute. I understand this. _

A comet, then another, streaked upwards through the starscape.

Pacifican surface-to-air missiles - maybe a brand new Nike-Ajax missile, maybe a slightly less brand new Lark - seeking out bombers at altitude. Astrid had seen the newsreels of test aircraft being shot down by the new wonder weapons with seemingly infallible precision.

Her brothers whooped with joy at the sight. Two enemy bombers down! Astrid held her breath.

_Nah..._ _Between chaff rockets, enemy SAM suppression aircraft, evasive maneuvers, and the sheer unreliability of these early SAMs, SAM belts could be cracked. Heck, the Air Force cracked even tougher defenses over Nazi Germany, and ground through the defenses over the Home Islands._ _Heck, I blew past even more sophisticated defenses over Siberia. Wait, what?_

_And if SAM suppression failed, one could always fly low at 3,000 feet, below the ability of primitive SAM radars to differentiate you from ground clutter. That, of course, put you in range of flak guns. _

_Which, of course, is the entire point of having SAMs and flak work together. SAMs kill bandits at high altitude, flak kills bandits trying to sneak in under the radar. Avoid one threat and face the other. Force your enemy to expend resources trying to kill either threat - usually the SAMs, since those are fewer and easier to kill._

_How do I understand this? _

Astrid counted only three pairs of missiles – they always fired two missiles at every target - before a deep rumble reverberated through the house, and the skylight suddenly filled with a bright, upside-down waterfall of stars.

_Unaimed barrage fire. Fill a patch of sky with shells, anyone who flies through dies. _

Kara screamed even as her brothers cheered again, doubtlessly imaging the newsreel clips of huge repeating guns, firing shells the size of her head at the enemy while recoiling like giant stamping machines, or smaller autocannon, or state-of-the-art Gatling guns that went _brrrrrrttttt! _as they filled the sky with death.

_Radar guided big guns (up to 125mm) for the high altitudes and unaimed barrage fire for the small guns. As long as you fly fast and jink, the big guns can never keep up fast enough to hit you. If you don't jink, one big round can shred your aircraft before you can eject. _

_You can't dodge barrage fire. You just need to be lucky. _

Astrid closed her eyes, and kept patting Kara's head _even as she remembered how Soviet barrage fire had shredded a pair of Thunderchiefs as they dove on a railway yard in Siberia_. _I was flying top cover my job was to kill MiGs. There was nothing I could have done. _

_How on earth do I know all this?! I'm barely eleven!_

Astrid looked down on herself. She was in her favorite pair of blue dungarees - and she fit inside the cage with plenty of room to spare. Yep, she was eleven all right.

Another series of crashes rang through the house, this time drowning out the rumble of the antiaircraft guns. _Bombs away. With primitive optical bombsights and terrible fire control, the bastards would be lucky to drop their bombs within a kilometer of their target. With modern fire-control radar, a Thud can drop iron bombs accurately enough to hit within fifty meters of target on a dive run - good enough that just a single stick of eighteen bombs will kill anything softer than a tank. And a Blackbird can drop TV and radar-guided bombs that can hit the broad side of a barn from 80,000 feet up and at Mach 3. _

But that didn't matter, because the Japanese had hundreds of planes, and were dropping tens of thousands of bombs. Drop enough bombs, and you will hit the target. Especially when the target is, at 300 hectares, one of the largest factory complexes in the Mainland.

_Please be safe, Mom. Just be safe. _

"Okay, Kara, sweetie. Good girl. There's no need to cry. You're a good girl. Big sis loves you very much. We're going to be okay." Astrid continued to pat Kara, helpless in the face of the falling bombs.

The sound of explosions drew closer, and even the boys started to sob.

"Boys, don't cry. You have to be brave for Kara, and set a good example." Mom had left her in charge. She was the eldest, and she was supposed to protect and care for her siblings. Her family. She'd stood in food lines, picked them all up from school, cooked, cleaned, kept the boys out of trouble and out of bombed-out streets…

Kara was wailing now, and the boys were starting to add their wails to the chorus. "Kara, you're a good girl. Boys, Kara, Mommy, Daddy and I all love you very much. We'll be okay. We'll all be okay. Mommy will come walking through the door in the morning, and we'll all give her a big hug."

But her family was crying, and there wasn't a single darned thing she could do help them. Her family was being bombed, separated, slowly starved because of those _darned Japanese!_ – and there wasn't a single thing she could do about it. If she couldn't do anything to keep her family safe, what kind of big sister was she?!

Astrid let a tear roll down her cheek, grateful for the pitch blackness of the kitchen.

_If you can't do anything, you do what you can._

She drew them all together in the corner of the cage, wrapping them all in her arms as tightly as she could.

The oppressive rumble of explosions drowned out any form of thought, and the four of them curled up into a ball and pressed themselves against a corner of the cage.

_Were the bastards ditching their attack runs and unloading to run home? Or was their aim just that bad? _

A massive crash rang out through the night, and the house collapsed in on her. Dust, great choking clouds of dust, rolled through the cage, and her lungs burned with every breath, sending her into a great coughing fit.

Her ears rang as she tried to stand… and bumped her head on the roof of the cage.

Kara was coughing. She couldn't see anything. Her brothers swore and cursed. Astrid turned on the torch, and saw...

The cage had worked. They were alive. But outside the cage, rubble – brickwork, wood, and bits of plaster – hemmed them in on every side.

The house had fallen on top of them. _Oh, god, the ration stamps. The kettle. The food stockpile in the larder. Our clothes. The house! _

Astrid shook her head. They were alive. They could deal with losing everything later. She gave the rubble an experimental poke. The rubble failed to budge.

"We're going to okay. They know most people have a cage shelter, and we put up the sign at the front. They'll have us out by morning." She gestured to the big water bottle. "Now we need to save water, so we'll only have four small cups of water a day each."

It would last four days.

"If you need to go, go in the bucket…"

The cage creaked and groaned. _That can't be right. These things were designed to take a first floor-collapse - and ours never failed..._

The cage started to move, and the metal ceiling inexplicably began to descend onto Astrid. Astrid gave the ceiling an experimental push, and forced her legs against the ceiling – anything to stop the ceiling from crushing all four of them!

Kara and the boys had stopped coughing, and were wailing again.

"Uhhh… boys, help me push, okay? We all need to push…"

The boys screamed and wailed, and started banging against the walls of the cage. Kara had curled up into a ball again.

"Kara? Mind giving big sis a hand…"

Astrid groaned as she pushed against the ceiling. She looked at herself again. Gone were the dungarees and slender limbs of her childhood. Well-toned arms, long legs, bosom, gee suit. Yep, she was twenty-two all right – a pilot fresh out of fighter school, flying a combat air patrol gone horribly wrong over Siberia. Her flight suit was inexplicably stained with dirt and rubble, her helmet felt heavy, her oxygen mask smelled terrible, and she was sweating like crazy. The climate control in Stormfly had never been good enough in combat.

The screams of her family and the radar warning receiver reached a fever pitch. Astrid turned over, put herself on all fours, and strained against the ceiling with all her might even as she pulled hard against the stick. G-forces pressed her into the ceiling as a SAM came barreling through the night sky outside the cage. If she didn't make the turn, the missile would hit, and her family would die.

Her family wailed, and the radar warning receiver blared. She pressed against the ceiling as hard as she could.

The missile loomed impossibly large outside the cage and the ceiling collapsed onto her.

The shock of oblivion overwhelmed her, and Astrid Hofferson, veteran fighter pilot, noiselessly sprang awake.

=O=

_Author's note: this chapter has been edited to clarify its status as a dreamed memory._

_Also, war is hell. _


	8. Traditional Crisis

Thanks to CajunBear73, atomicsub927, and TheGrumpyGhost for their commentary and input.

=O=

Chapter 8

Berk AFB

Astrid jolted awake, and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

She was alive – that SA-2 over Siberia had missed. What had she been dreaming about? Probably the cage again. Man, that night spent buried under the rubble of her house had been hairy.

They had gotten lucky – the Chin family next door had been killed by a direct hit to their house (which a cage shelter was no defense against), leaving only Mr. Chin as the sole survivor. _Where did he go after that…_

"Attention all passengers, this is your captain speaking. We will begin our descent into Berk Air Force Base in five minutes. Please ensure all your tray tables are stowed, and strap in for landing."

Astrid rose from the row of seats she had occupied on the agonizingly long flight from Nevada to Qinghai, and nearly hit the white plastic-coated ceiling. She looked around the upper deck of the cargo aircraft. A narrow, cramped deck filled with backward-facing passenger seats (safer in the event of a crash) stared back at her. Bright sunlight streamed into the otherwise dim space through six windows – one for each door.

_Cathay isn't going to be losing passengers to the Air Force anytime soon…_

She strolled over to the nearest window, and took a gander out the window. Beyond the gleaming silver wing and roaring turbofans of the humongous C-5 cargo plane, grey green rolling grasslands stretched, merging with a mélange of parched-looking grey-brown hills, a small sky-blue lake, and snowcapped mountains as one looked to the horizon.

And atop the scruffy grasslands were the familiar crisscrossing grey and black lines that marked the aprons, taxiways, and runways of Berk. Astrid smiled as she traced the three widely-spaced five-kilometer-long runways, short fighter runway, redundant taxiways (long enough to take off from), and multiple widely-separated dispersal aprons of the expansive airbase – hardening features which marked the base as both a forward air base and one suitable for warfare in the Atomic Age.

It would take a determined enemy a lot of attack sorties, a lot of planes, and (provided Astrid did her job correctly) a lot of dead pilots to knock out all of Berk's long runways and taxiways faster than they could be repaired – and so long as Berk's runways stayed open, Berk could stand and fight. And even a massed attack with thermonuclear missiles would need several multimegaton groundbursts to cover the widely separated dispersal aprons and rip up the hardened concrete runways beyond usability. This translated to maybe eight notoriously unreliable Soviet thermonuclear missiles, two per aimpoint.

Astrid squinted. Since her departure, new taxiways, with little turf-covered pyramidal concrete hills budding from them, had been added to the dispersal areas. Hardened Aircraft Shelters – and big ones at that, large enough for four Blackbirds, their maintenance techs, and a few days of ordinance and fuel. So someone in Portland had finally shelled out for proper protection for the expensive F-12 Blackbirds and the equally expensive B-58 Hustlers.

Basically reinforced concrete bunkers for planes, the reinforced concrete walls and concrete blast door of a Hardened Aircraft Shelter could withstand anything short of a direct hit from a heavy-duty aerial bomb. The steeply sloped walls could even protect against a nuclear near-miss (well, a miss of several miles…). So instead of needing eight inaccurate nuclear missiles to blow up Berk, the Soviets would need maybe a dozen.

Drop enough bombs, and you will hit the target.

Yep. She was home.

=O=

Astrid strolled out of the squadron administrative office. Above the door hung the squadron insignia – a flaming metal fist with wings – and a huge sign marking the territory of the 74th Fighter Squadron. The squadron commander, a wizened crone of a fighter pilot who had fought WWII from Britain to Germany and lived to fight again in Siberia – seemed nice enough, and from what she could tell from the office, things appeared to be running smoothly in this cog of the massive Pacifican war machine.

Snotlout came around the corner. _Darn. Of all the people to run into today…_

But instead of flashing her a grin and flirting, Snotlout was apparently trying his best to look glum – an altogether unconvincing performance.

"Look, Astrid. I'm sorry about this. There was nothing me or the dudes could do. I'm here if you need a shoulder to cry on." He moved forward to give Astrid a hug.

Astrid stepped back, but was too startled to give Snotlout a glare. "What are you talking about?"

Snotlout looked puzzled for a moment, and then gave a long, theatrical, sigh. "It actually happened. Your assigned backseater… is Hiccup Haddock. Curse that accursed Tuffnut! He tempted fate, and these are the dire consequences… Astrid where are you going?"

Astrid left Snotlout behind, and made a beeline for the squadron bulletin board.

She rechecked the typewritten assignment sheet. Snotlout hadn't been lying.

She was going to be flying frontseat to Hiccup Haddock.

=O=

The Officer's Club was barely half-full, and since it was still tea-time, the bar was practically empty. Astrid nursed her drink, slumped on the table. To drink, or not to drink? If she got drunk, she could put the mess behind her until tomorrow. On the other hand, she'd have to _deal_ with the mess tomorrow.

She was a professional. She would do her duty, and mould her team into an effective fighting force.

Oh, who was she kidding? She was the best, and she was being stuck with a technically-oriented weapons system operator. Hiccup had been competent as a groundsider, and Astrid knew he had plenty of brainpower, but he just didn't seem to have much fight in him.

And there was a war on, for crying out loud.

Across the planet, Communism was on the march. Communist governments had inexorably come to power in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and of course, the granddaddy of them all, India. With the latest Soviet ultimatum, the papers were predicting that West Berlin would fall to Communism by the end of the year – with West Germany soon to follow. Pakistan was on shaky ground – West Pakistan in particular was a basket case. Red India, under direction from Moscow, seemed intent on pushing the Pacifican border – heck, their ground troops were exceeding their own claim lines now, if the news broadcast playing on the club's television was to be believed.

Only overwhelming Pacifican superiority in strategic nuclear arms – nuclear bombers, missiles, submarines, high-orbit nuclear weapons platforms, _and defensive interceptors_ \- held the Communist hordes at bay. If the Soviets tried something, anything – even if they stuck to tanks and rifles - the Joint Government would go nuclear – and count on coming out on top in the ensuing nuclear holocaust. The Pacific would be ruined – perhaps a few score of cities lost, a hundred million dead. But the Soviet Union would be utterly annihilated as a society. The nuclear bombers of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) would work the target list down to the most insignificant town in a weeklong frenzy of nuclear bombing (contingent on surviving bases).

But the missile gap was closing every day…

"Hey Astrid! You look like shit!" A familiar voice rang out in the restaurant, and Astrid sprung to her feet.

"No… way! Ruffnut Thornston, you crazy bitch!" Astrid strode forward, and enveloped her friend in a tight hug. "What are you doing here?"

Ruffnut twirled one of her braids. "Well, after I left hereabouts, I managed to get a Tactical Air posting in Heilongjiang. Dumplings, noodles, and weather so terrible you can barely see the ittybitty trees from 300 feet. Got bored, so I went for a spin in East Pakistan. Pew pew pew! Did my share, came back home, and then..."

Astrid's eyes went wide. "Wait wait wait. What are you're flying now? Phantoms?"

Ruffnut beamed, and pointed at her mission patch. "Not just any Phantoms." Astrid took a look, and whistled.

On Ruffnut's patch was a scared-looking weasel, below which someone had printed the immortal letters YGBSM, uttered by the first backseater ever tasked with the mission.

"You gotta' be shittin' me. You're flying Wild Weasel?!" Astrid gave a low whistle.

Wild Weasel – air defense suppression - missions were among the most dangerous in the Air Force. Instead of getting as far away from enemy missiles as possible, Wild Weasels used their planes as missile bait. Once the enemy turned their radars on (revealing their positions), the Wild Weasel pilots would attack the radars with anti-radar missiles – while trying to survive the incoming hail of missiles with countermeasures and wild maneuvers. This kept enemy air defenses busy (suppressed) long enough to allow other aircraft to slip past and complete their missions.

Ruffnut nodded. "Girl, Wild Weasel is the best ride on the planet. Whew! But enough about me. Why the long face? You're flying Blackbirds, for crying out loud!"

Astrid sighed. "Hiccup Haddock's going to be my backseater."

Ruffnut did a double take. "The heck? I thought he was fast-tracking to fly a desk!" She frowned. "Maybe he won't be so bad. You know as well as I do that you can never tell who has the balls for combat until the real thing."

Astrid groaned. "He was tinkering with our birds up to the day he left. And he nearly rammed a jet into my Blackbird in training."

Ruffnut shrugged. "He does have an in with Gobber, and Gobber's still base maintenance chief. Your bird'll be on top of the list for upgrades and spares, right next to the squadron commander's."

Astrid narrowed her eyes. "You're being unusually considerate today."

Ruffnut fidgeted. "Well… Phantoms and Weasels have backseaters too, okay. I got a pretty good one. Saved our asses more than once over Bengal. Bit of a nerd too. But the best electronics warfare officers often are." Ruffnut said. "I… gave him the benefit of the doubt, and he ended up okay. You might consider giving Hiccup a chance too."

"You want me to go easy on Hiccup Haddock? The biggest cause of… _problems_ this side of the Yangtze?" Astrid stood. "Maybe I could stress-test him until he quits!"

"That's a bit excessive, don'tcha think?" Ruffnut chewed her lip. "Also not an option."

"Huh?" Astrid said.

"Why do you think I'm here at all? My Wild Weasel squadron got deployed here. And chatter from higher-ups is that a whole wing of fast air is hot on our tails. This place…" Ruffnut gestured to the restaurant "…is headed for a fight."

Astrid groaned, and placed her head in her hands before muttering a tirade under her breath.

Ruffnut handed Astrid a bottle. "Look on the bright side. Since you don't have a choice, you don't need to think! See? Life just keeps on giving!"

Astrid put the bottle down, and Ruffnut grabbed it. "I'm gonna go talk to him."

"Atta girl!" Ruffnut raised both bottles as Astrid stormed out the door.

=O=

Bay of Bengal

"Sir! I see Mumbai!"

From the bridge of the cargo ship, the Soviet Major smiled gently to himself as the port of Mumbai – formerly Bombay – drifted into view through his binoculars.

His journey had been a long one. From bases beyond the Urals, men and materiel had endured painfully slow weeklong train journeys to the shores of the Black Sea. Weeks more had been spent loading under cover of complete darkness, warily avoiding the clockwork timetables of the damned Pacifican reconnaissance satellites – even as their friends in the Soviet Army cheerily loaded their tanks, anti-aircraft missiles and jets in broad daylight.

And at sea, even as his men endured a week of terrible conditions below deck, deprived of exercise except in ones and twos and separated from their families by the complete communications blackout, the damned capitalists had ceaselessly harassed them.

The Pacifican Navy had sent a veritable swarm of aircraft to monitor the ships plying the seas between the Black Sea and South Asia. Patrol planes, fighter jets, even antisubmarine helicopters had buzzed his ship almost daily. In the Red Sea, the Major had trembled in fear as a Pacifican frigate had come within visual range - and practically whooped with joy as the Indian Navy had come to their rescue, defiantly scraping the sides of the imperialist frigate and chasing it off! Had the Pacificans boarded the ship, and discovered the true nature of its cargo, the consequences would have been dire indeed.

For a moment, the Major let himself relax, and imagined the warm beaches of India.

Operation _Anadyr_ was going according to plan, and all was right with the world.

=O=


	9. Doctrine

Thanks to CajunBear73 and LongLiveOurKing for their comments and input.

=O=

Chapter 9

The little corner Hiccup had carved out of the maintenance office was piled high with paperwork. Gobber had graciously let him keep the little space, assigning an adjacent cubicle to Hiccup's replacement. Hiccup nervously chewed on a pencil as he cursed Guan Gong, his damned ancestors, the personnel allocation system, and whoever else had seen fit to pair him up with Astrid frickkin' Hofferson.

Unless he could meet Astrid's exacting standards and _meet them quick_ – because Hiccup was sure Astrid wasn't going to give him second chances – Hiccup was sure he would be in a world of pain. A fighter pilot could make the life of a backseater very, very, uncomfortable.

He leafed through the latest electronic warfare report, taking notes as he went. The going was slow, and his mind kept returning to his Astrid-shaped predicament. Hiccup tugged at his tie. Repetitive mechanical work might have been better for today...

The door opened, and Astrid walked in, her aviator sunglasses clipped neatly over her green fatigues.

Hiccup stood up ramrod straight. "Captain Hofferson."

Astrid looked him over. "Hiccup. I believe you understand why I'm here."

_Okay, so first names, then. _

"Crystal, Astrid." He picked up a manila folder. "Here is my service record for your perusal. As you should be able to see, I am fully certified to operate the air-to-air and air-to-ground systems of the F-12B. I am also certified to operate the Babbage-Lovelace Modular Reconnaissance Suite."

Astrid flipped through the folder with marked disinterest.

"Please also find a copy of the report by the board reviewing our near-collision. The mistakes were mine to make, but the board found my actions satisfactory."

He handed her another sheaf of reports. "Our bird. Highlights from her flight log. Our assigned airframe is 57083. Our bird is safe to fly, and fully operational."

Astrid raised an eye as she flipped through the second sheaf. "Take me to her."

=O=

Astrid turned to the aircraft, and ran a hand across the composite edge of the sleek airframe. _Graceful as ever. _Hiccup fell in behind her as they inspected the aircraft.

"This is our bird?"

Hiccup crossed his arms. "Yep. I've been here for the past week. The ground crew is solid, her systems work well, and previous pilots have found no major handling abnormalities. Toothless is as good a bird as they come."

Astrid glared at him. "You named it what?"

Hiccup shrugged. "Toothless had a dodgy radar. No radar, no missiles. No missiles, no teeth. Toothless. It stuck."

Astrid raised an eyebrow. "Does it have teeth now?"

Hiccup nodded. "Found the problem myself." He let some pride creep into his voice.

Astrid said nothing. Hiccup frowned. _I met Air Force requirements. Isn't that enough? _

_Astrid wants the job done properly. Do your job properly. No horseplay._

He flipped open the binder. "I have the flight plan for tomorrow. It's a training flight with one scheduled tanker hookup."

"Understood." Astrid took a deep breath. "Captain Haddock, your performance in ground operations appears satisfactory. I await the chance to evaluate your performance under operational conditions. Please perform an additional full systems check before tomorrow's flight."

Hiccup tried to mask his irritation, but it apparently slipped past his expression. Astrid's eyes narrowed.

"Hiccup, do you understand our primary mission?"

"Our primary mission is the air defense of the mainland Joint Government against aerial threats." Hiccup squeaked.

"Partially correct. But if one were to look at the situation more generally…" She paused.

"…our primary mission is to fight and win a thermonuclear war against the Soviet Union."

Hiccup nodded.

Astrid dipped her head, and thought of Kara, the boys, and her parents. "No. I don't think you understand. This isn't about winning, or duty, or honor. This isn't about geopolitics, or interactions between competing socioeconomic systems. This is about family."

Hiccup thought of his dad – probably commanding a TAC air force somewhere in Heilongjiang – and his mother, an astronaut who had loved space more than her family.

"This is about your family, my family, and the families of all 1.5 billion Pacificans. More specifically, this is about the families who will die every time a missile, a bomber, or a strike fighter gets by me, you and Toothless here."

_Four out of six means two cities off the map._

"I understand." Hiccup nodded.

Astrid glared. "Don't interrupt. It's very rude." She continued. "If and when The Big One comes, you may need to do your job in the face of certain death. Everyone we know and love may be ash. Our bird may be damaged, on fire, out of fuel with no tanker in sight. We may be puking in our flight suits from radiation poisoning. We may no longer have an airfield to land at."

Hiccup tried to resist the urge to roll his eyes at the hyperbole.

_The Soviets can't nuke every airstrip, and Aerospace Defense is good enough that they're expecting two hundred million dead… tops! That's barely fifteen percent of the population! SAC can nuke the Soviets into oblivion. _

_Oh, right. Two hundred million dead._

Hiccup nodded again.

"But regardless of whether we are heading out to murder millions of Soviet citizens or stop them from murdering millions of ours, we will complete our mission. You will not crack. You will do your job, even if you need to drink your own puke to do it." Astrid jabbed her finger into Hiccup's chest.

"So do your job. Systems check tonight. We fly Toothless tomorrow morning."

Astrid walked out of the hanger.

=O=

Well, that had gone reasonably well. Hiccup was at least trying to do a good job, and knew what was expected of him.

He had even put on his service uniform for the meeting. Even if it was a little excessive, it showed respect. Good.

She'd reserve final judgment for air operations, but Ruffnut was right. She had no choice. Odds were that she'd be stuck with him in a shooting war.

She mulled her words, and regretted none of them. Astrid needed a backseater who could stare down mushroom clouds, megadeaths, and a puke-smeared helmet, and still perform to perfection. The insane orgy of violence that was warfare in the Atomic Age demanded nothing less.

And the eighty to ninety percent of the country (depending on the breaks) that would survive a nuclear war was counting on them.

Was it insane? Perhaps. But nuclear weapons were just that – weapons. Weapons could be used to threaten, cajole, deter. Or they could be used to kill. There were no inherent limitations to using nuclear weapons only if the enemy used them first. Sure, sharply restricting nuclear weapons use was probably the smart thing to do, if both sides were evenly matched – and even if they were not, since even a single nuclear weapon could do immense damage.

But Astrid knew one thing.

The only good threat is a _credible_ one.

=O=

The National Security Advisor, her close-cropped black hair tied into a neat bun, mounted the podium to the applause of the gathered officials, the white compass and blue field of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization fluttering behind her.

"Friends. Allies." She smiled. "I shall start by thanking you all for the warm welcome I have received here in Brussels. Without your assistance and cooperation, our great alliance…" She gesticulated at the banner behind her. "…simply would not exist. It certainly would not be an adequate bulwark against Soviet Communism – and theoretically German revanchism."

The German representative nodded. _Nobody_ wanted the Nazis back.

"Our bulwark is made tangible by a mere two Pacifican divisions, but it is made credible by tens of thousands of tactical and strategic nuclear warheads. It is those nuclear warheads, and not tanks and men, which guarantee the security of this continent." She paused.

"It is commonly believed that the _only _consideration in the Soviet and Pacifican calculation is that of assured destruction, of the threat of total annihilation upon initiation of hostilities. That is to say, the common impression is that we will end civilization in a massive nuclear exchange if we so much as see a single Soviet tank cross into West Berlin, and that our threat to do so is what stops the Soviets from invading."

"That is true on some basic level, but it is meaningless operationally – useful mainly for public relations and doom-mongering."

The assembled delegates chuckled.

"Several years ago, when the Soviets had only several dozen nuclear weapons with which to retaliate, it might have been a useful threat, since only the Soviets would receive unacceptable damage. But today, even when faced with the limited threat of a mere two thousand Soviet medium-range missiles, it is obviously not a credible threat. Nobody would ever believe a threat to immediately end the world in response to a Soviet invasion of Berlin, and actually carrying out such a threat would be stupid. It simply does not make sense to make such ludicrous threats, or keep them. Threats must be _proportionate_ to be credible – and, therefore, so must the means to carry them out."

The audience nodded along.

"For instance, a _proportionate _threat to a Soviet seizure of Berlin might be an armed attempt to retake Berlin. This of course would trigger a general war in Europe, during which we would most certainly employ tactical nuclear weapons, from man-portable nuclear rocket launchers to short-range nuclear missiles, in defense of the Continent. Obviously, we would then wield the threat of a strategic exchange – with ICBMs, long-range bombers, and other strategic weapons against targets in the Soviet interior - to compel the Soviets to accept military nuclear defeat on the ground."

The French, Germans, and Belgians nodded happily.

"In fighting at the strategic level, we have a high confidence we will be able to deliver a knockout blow to enemy nuclear and conventional warfighting assets – bases, airfields, and barracks. Recent innovations in low-yield weapons, command and control systems, and solid-state computers, which may allow us to attack selected components of the enemy's war machine without hampering our ability to strike massively later on, raise the possibility that there may be intermediate steps between strategic war and unacceptable destruction. Properly protected in fallout shelters, many millions are expected to survive an exchange not directly targeted on the civilian population. Many millions will also die as collateral damage. In theory, large numbers of survivors, held hostage to the threat of further nuclear strikes, may compel one side or both to terminate the war. But this cannot be taken for granted."

The Germans furrowed their brows. Under the Nazis, Germany had very nearly fought the Second World War to its total destruction, and the Soviets had been willing to suffer twenty million casualties to achieve victory. And who would forgo a knockout blow in favor of an incremental application of nuclear firepower while negotiating, especially since the whole war would probably end in nuclear hellfire anyway? Cannot be taken for granted was quite the understatement.

The Ambassador shrugged gently. The true value of the endless studies, she felt, was how they increased the uncertainty under which the Soviets had to operate when calculating their risks of strategic nuclear war – which was very good, since uncertainty made people hesitate. On the other hand, they did offer intriguing possibilities, which was why strategic forces were being reorganized to provide as much flexibility as possible. If they ended up fighting a limited nuclear war, however unlikely… well, she wanted to win that, too.

She shook her head, and continued her speech.

"And so we come full circle to the threat of total annihilation. It should now be clear to all that the threat that keeps this Continent safe from the ravages of Communism is not the threat of annihilation, but is rather the threat of _escalation_."

=O=

_Author's note: As far as I can tell, most incarnations of Astrid have her depicted as a perfectionist strongly influenced by her sense of honor and duty. _

_In Real History, during the early decades of the Cold War, Curtis LeMay and his generals imposed on Strategic Air Command a culture of perfection and instantaneous response with an iron fist, molding SAC into a highly effective nuclear warfighting arm – because they expected to fight and win a war in one nerve-wracking flight to the Soviet Union, and that flight had to be perfect (actually, it would probably have taken several flights, but you get the idea). The story is about Air Defense Command, but the logic is identical. _


	10. Training

Thanks to Atomicsub927 and CajunBear73 for their comments and input.

=O=

Chapter 10

Hiccup stepped out of the ready room, and into the freezing wind of the Qingzang Plateau. The metal helmet collar of his bulky orange pressure suit (practically a spacesuit) weighed heavily on his shoulders as he lumbered across the tarmac, a white space helmet clutched in his right arm.

Astrid was waiting in the back of the pickup truck. She extended a hand to Hiccup, and pulled him up the step.

The pickup sped off to the flight line, and they got to Toothless in no time at all.

=O=

Astrid ran through her preflight with practiced efficiency as Hiccup clambered in behind her. "If you don't like the name, you can change it if you want." She heard the click of the microphone as Hiccup called in. "Berk Actual, this is Plasma 9, lining up for takeoff."

Three kilometers of deep grey high-stress concrete runway stretched out in front of her. "Plasma 9, you are clear for takeoff."

The J58s ignited with a roar, and Astrid felt the familiar sensation of thrust as Toothless _Seriously?!_ climbed into the late morning sky.

Toothless leveled out at 80,000 feet and Mach 3.3. Hiccup sounded slightly tinny on the radio. "Berk Actual, this is Plasma 9. We are outbound 280, heading for the Northwestern Test Range."

"Roger, Plasma 9. Happy trails."

Hiccup began to chatter as he monitored the radio. "Astrid, we've got a civilian flight, CX038, passing fifty klicks south of us. If you want, I could try to get a bead on it with infrared search and track (IRST). Bogey is 241/78 from base, altitude uncertain…"

Astrid decided to throw Hiccup for a loop.

Astrid pulled hard on the stick, and Toothless shook slightly as it turned a country-sized corner at two gees.

Hiccup frowned, slightly fazed by the maneuver. "Okay. That'll get us on track. Now just hold her steady…"

Astrid opened up on the throttle, and allowed Toothless to climb through 90,000 feet before putting Toothless into a steep (by Blackbird standards) dive. _Eh. More of a dip. _

"I have lost target."

Astrid was practically laughing as she banked Toothless around for another countrysized turn. "Pretend they're shooting as us."

"Infrared hopped around like crazy. It can't lock on when you do that!"

Astrid's voice filled with steel. "Then infrared's useless. The enemy gets a vote, Hiccup. Our chances of dying go up every time I fly straight and level."

Hiccup gulped. _Oh boy._ "Suggest a barrel roll at 80,000 feet; maintain pitch ten degrees above bogey."

"You got it."

Hiccup's world began to turn as Astrid began her glacial spin. Hiccup caught a glimpse of his window as he furiously worked the IRST. _Sky. Check check check. Sun. IRST's good. Sky. Come on, where the heck are you… Land…_

A great force pulled at Hiccup, and his head banged against the canopy as Toothless fell into the roll with smooth gusto. He clutched the targeting joystick. _Seriously? A high-gee roll?_

He matched the aircraft's spin, and yelled in triumph. "We have track!"

_Not bad. _She turned the Blackbird back on course, and they covered the one thousand kilometers to the Northwestern Test Range in fifteen minutes.

"Okay. Let's stretch our legs, Hiccup. Radar on." Astrid took a glance at her radar display. If Hiccup saw something, she would see it too.

The pulse doppler radar flickered to life, and a few dozen shapes flickered to life.

"Okay, Astrid. We've got four bogeys, 187/650 Bullseye, altitude 600 feet, Mach 0.9. Looks like a flight of Thunderchiefs out of Aksu Wensu. Radar's good. Let's get 'em."

"You got it." Astrid could barely make out the four bogeys on the screen amongst the busy military traffic of the NWTR. But Hiccup had. _We should give 'em a courtesy call._

"Thunderchief flight heading north-northwest, this is Plasma 9. We're doing some maneuvers and would like to beam you with fire-control radar, over."

"Plasma 9, this is Cadillac 1. We copy. RWRs off. Knock yourselves out."

"Roger."

"You got it, Hiccup." Astrid noticed the freight train and highway filled with cars that had just appeared on the doppler display – Hiccup had turned the sensitivity of the set all the way up. _He's expecting evasive maneuvers. Good. So was I. _

"You expecting our friends there to make a run for it, Hiccup?"

"Uhh… yeah. I'm pretty sure they're gonna try beaming us." _Yeah, yeah, it was obvious. _

"Well, you should have given me a heads-up. It might have been obvious this time, but in a more complex situation, I can't position if you don't keep me posted. Capisce?"

"Understood."

Toothless went into a turn. Astrid deftly maneuvered Toothless into the engagement basket, taking Toothless through a series of gentle curves and swoops that belied the enormous stresses on and supersonic speed of the aircraft.

Hiccup sighted an opportunity. "We are locked on."

All of a sudden, the Thunderchiefs made a sharp turn, disappearing from Astrid's radar screen as they did. By sharply turning so that they were flying perpendicular (abeam) to the radar beam, the Thunderchiefs cut out the doppler shift in the radar return, rendering them invisible amongst the ground clutter. She had just gotten "beamed".

"We lost 'em."

She took Toothless thorough an England-sized turn, and the Thunderchiefs beamed her again.

"No target."

Astrid clenched her jaw. This would be so much easier with a two-ship formation. Up against two properly positioned aircraft, it would be impossible for an enemy aircraft to beam both Blackbirds at once.

"Screw it." She gunned the engines, and pulled Toothless up into a climb.

"Radar off. Switching to infrared track. We have position." Hiccup gritted his teeth.

_In synch. _Astrid smiled, put Toothless into a barrel roll at Mach 3.1, and dove down on the Thunderchiefs as Hiccup guided her in.

Hiccup gulped as he eyed their airspeed.

The Blackbird was a temperature-limited aircraft. While its J58 engines could theoretically (if you cut out the safety limiters) push the Blackbird all the way up to Mach 3.7, the ludicrous speed of 1.3 kilometers a second was only possible above 90,000 feet. In the thicker, soupier air below, the immense friction with the surrounding air would literally cook the Blackbird's engines.

Astrid turned the engines down as she made the turn, and Toothless slowed to Mach 2.5.

"And… radar on. Lock."

_Boom!_

Astrid whooped even as the airframe shuddered. "You can't beam us if you don't know where we are!" Laughing, she took the aircraft into a gentle imitation of a "low yo-yo" the length of Denmark, swooping down to gain speed before making a turn.

Hiccup looked a little worried. They were out of their element – in the thick muck of deep atmosphere – and losing airspeed fast. Toothless was practically shuddering. But Astrid was… laughing? "Hey Hiccup. Fuel. We're low."

_Oh, right. The fuel gauge. _He checked the flight plan. It lurched in his grasp as Astrid took Toothless through a series of maneuvers.

Hiccup adjusted his set, and tapped his mic. "Teapot 3, Teapot 3, do you copy? This is Plasma 9, ready to take on gas, over." He tried again. "Teapot 3, this is Plasma 9, ready to take on gas, over."

A tinny, accented voice rang out over the airwaves. "Roger, Plasma 9. We are Teapot 3. We are 120/50 Pinhead. You are number three in line."

Hiccup breathed a sigh of relief. "Roger, Teapot 3. Over and out."

_A bit slow on the uptake back there, Hiccup. _Astrid took Toothless in for another series of maneuvers at just under Mach 2.

Hiccup's voice rang out over the intercom. "Uhh… what exactly is the point of all of this?"

Astrid shrugged. "Expanding the envelope. Gotta practice how to wrangle Toothless here in different environments. We sure as heck don't want to be stuck over enemy airspace at Mach 2 – or less - without knowing how she handles at low speed. Plus, I wanted to burn off speed before we hit the tanker."

They descended another ten kilometers, and all around Astrid, deep purple steadily turned to bright blue. Astrid craned her neck, hoping to sight the tanker.

"Hiccup. Please relay position of tanker."

Hiccup cursed silently. "Got Teapot 3 on IRST. One o'clock low."

"Finally."

=O=

Astrid allowed herself to relax as they accelerated to Mach 3, leaving the turbulent, jittery wake of the Stratotanker and the soupy tropospheric air far behind. Another hour of maneuvers and they would head for home, having burned a grand total of sixty tonnes of special JP-7 kerosene over their 4-hour flight - twice Toothless's un-fuelled empty weight. Blackbirds were practically flying fuel tanks, with their thirty-tonne airframes holding nearly forty tonnes of fuel.

So far, her first backseater was proving to be a lot better than she had hoped. They weren't completely in synch yet, but if today was any indication, they had a good chance of getting there.

And if the bellyaching circulating around training was to be believed, the Administration's insistence that the F-12 be a "multi-role" fighter-bomber instead of a pure interceptor was seriously complicating weapons systems officer training.

If Hiccup had qualified on a reconnaissance system in addition to the complex strike and air-to-air systems, there might just be more to the fishbone than flaming ejections.

=O=

Northeastern India

The Soviet Major ran forward along the military traffic jam that had developed along the small dirt road. He swung his torch back and forth, casting shadows in the night. Curious Indian villagers had emerged from their houses. The Major swore, and turned to his Indian liaison officer. "Comrade! Please keep these villagers in their houses! What is in our trailers is very secret! They must see as little as possible!"

The Indian Army officer barked orders to his men and to the villagers. The villagers headed back to their homes, casting interested glances at the odd military convoy in their midst.

They arrived at the head of the convoy. The lead tractor-trailer could not make the turn – the enormous trailer it lugged was too long, and there was a small hut in the way. The Soviet Major was aghast.

His regiment had had the misfortune to be assigned a posting in the far northeast of the vast country – just south of the disputed eastern sector, where the resolute Indians were driving the capitalists from their land. This placed him far from the beaches and cities he had hoped to see, and placed him within two hundred kilometers of the Pacifican border, within easy reach of reconnaissance aircraft.

Daybreak was in four hours! Pacifican reconnaissance satellites would be overhead in three! Turning around to find another route would take hours at least! If they did not get to their hide positions in the forest in time…

He turned to the massive canvas-covered trailer, and contemplated once more the terrible consequences if the Pacificans discovered the operation before they were fully ready. He knew only the rudiments of the arcane science behind the secret weapons, but the very thought of what they could do chilled him to his core.

The Indian officer marched up to him, and examined the problem. "The solution, comrade Major, is obvious. Tear down the hut."

The Major was horrified. "But…"

The Indian officer shook his head. "Our secret weapons will assure our victory against the imperialists. The operation takes precedence. The hut must go."

The Major gulped.

"My fellow countrymen will be compensated for the loss of their hut, Major. I shall see to it. Now tell your men to prepare to move!"

The major ran back to his staff car, barking orders along the way.

The tractor-trailer made the turn, and the convoy roared to life.

The major saluted the glum-looking inhabitants of the hut as he passed the turn. They had performed a great service for their nation, and for the cause of World Socialism. It was the least he could do.

=O=

_Author's note: Tagged this little segment with the Soviet Major onto Chapter 10._


	11. Revolution in Military Affairs

Thanks to CajunBear73 for his review and input.

=O=

Chapter 11

Berk AFB

Hiccup continued to whisper in Astrid's ear as they entered the briefing room, finishing a conversation he had sprung on her way too late. "Okay, so what you need to do is keep the antenna in sight of the guided bomb. Just take a right 45-degree turn so you don't overshoot the target before the bomb does. If you do, the datalink will cut out and we'll lose command guidance, so the bomb will miss unless we've locked on already. If I lock on, I will announce it by saying 'locked-on'."

Astrid nodded to Hiccup, and they took their seats, joining the dozen or so pilots awaiting the day's exercises. The squadron commanding officer came in, and gestured to the map on the wall.

"Okay, people. The name of the game today is bombing practice. I'm sure you've all read your briefing packets. The gist is simple. You aim for the post, and drop your bombs. Team on the ground scores your drops, and whoever gets an average closest to the mark gets free drinks. Are there any questions before we begin?" The Colonel smiled.

Snotlout whistled. "Free drinks, here I come!"

Hiccup raised his arm. "Uhhh… I arranged to expend a single prototype GBU-series electro-optical/command-Guided Bomb Unit for practice and testing purposes. I would like my run with that weapon to be discounted from our bombing average."

Someone groaned. "Just say TV-guided bomb, you dope!"

The Colonel chuckled. "Of course."

Snotlout stood in protest. "What?! Why does Hiccup get to use fancy gizmos?"

Snotlout's backseater, a dark-haired man from Fujian, cradled his head in his arms.

Hiccup spoke up. "Well… I'm the only backseater here qualified to operate that experimental weapons system. It doesn't mean anything – everyone here is here because they're all perfectly qualified operators, but…"

It was Astrid's turn to cradle her head in her arms.

Snotlout took a step towards Hiccup. "Well, why do you get preferential treatment, then, huh? What if your stupid gizmo doesn't work? Why should we ignore it if it spirals off and hits three miles from the target, huh?"

The Colonel now wore a scowl on her face. "My decision is final. Now, callsigns and frequency allocations..."

=O=

"Plasma 9, this is Plasma 8. You're dead, Hiccup."

"Plasma 8, this is Plasma 7. Stay off the channel unless you have something to say, and route all communications through your backseater as per protocol."

Hiccup groaned as he continued to monitor the bewildering array of instruments and gauges that covered every inch of the panel before him. _Okay, Toothless bud, I know you're not used to having all of this extra stuff strapped to you, but try to get along with the guided bomb, okay? _

_You'd better get along, or Astrid's gonna kill me. _

Astrid brought Toothless into a holding pattern as Snotlout made his run. "You know, Hiccup, you need to learn to _just shut up_ sometimes_._ Not everyone is out to get you, but try not to get on everyone's nerves." Astrid sighed. Hiccup _was_ competent. Good, even. But he was still… _Hiccup. _

Even as Toothless thrummed gently with over a hundred megawatts of engine power (enough to run a small town), he continued to give off endless little chirps and coos, all of which needed Astrid's close attention.

Hiccup nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

Toothless blazed across the sky, crossing the vast expanse of Gansu and back into Inner Mongolia in a mere fifteen minutes. The blasted Gobi, the open steppe, mountain, river, lake… all passed under Toothless as scratches on Hiccup's radar screen in as much time as it took to drink a coke.

Hiccup chewed his lip thoughtfully. "Astrid, do you think it's weird that we're being trained for bombing missions? Isn't this more of a SAC thing?"

"You're the one taking experimental bombs for a spin, you tell me." Astrid kept her eyes on her instruments.

Hiccup shrugged. "They're not all prototypes. The nuclear version is already in service – the achieved accuracy of twenty-odd meters is good enough for even a baby-sized nuclear warhead. The nonnuclear GBU-series weapons have yet to achieve the desired…"

"Okay, back on topic." Astrid shrugged. "We're dropping bombs because Toothless here, by decree of Congress, is a _multirole_ fighter. SAC needs extra muscle, and multirole fighters let the Air Force swing from defense to offense and back depending on how the war goes."

Hiccup frowned. "That's stupid. How long do we expect a nuclear war to last anyway?!"

Astrid checked her airspeed. "Who knows? The only nuclear war we ever fought was with Imperial Japan, and that was when only one side – our side - had a _very_ limited nuclear stockpile. Some moron spending way too much money trying to be ready for anything, I guess."

Hiccup snorted. "Yeah, but we're _Aerospace Defense Command_. We fly interceptors and coordinate them with our SAM network. That's the entire point of ADC. Multirole fighters are a TAC thing."

Astrid frowned. "Like I said, our goal is to fight and win a global thermonuclear war. Boxing up missions is a Portland thing."

Hiccup shrugged. "Just doesn't feel… tidy, that's all…"

Snotlout came in over the radio. "Yeah! Two hundred and twenty nine meters! Beat that, Hiccup!"

Snotlout's bombs had hit an average of two hundred meters from the goalpost – a not inconsiderable feat considering that they were parachute-retarded weapons being dropped from 70,000 feet and Mach 3.3.

Two hundred meters was not quite enough for conventional bombing unless large numbers of weapons were available – for instance, from the bays and pylons of a heavy bomber. However, the preferred weapon of the F-12B was a one-megaton B28 thermonuclear bomb. When _initiated_, the bomb would explode with the energy of one million tonnes (one "megaton") of TNT, creating a fireball two kilometers across. In that context, two-hundred meter accuracy was more than sufficient to ensure destruction of all but the most hardened of targets – and was reasonably superior to the three-hundred-meter accuracies of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

"Astrid, we're up for bat." Hiccup checked his instruments once more. _Okay, Toothless bud, it's showtime. _

They flew a swooping arc over Xinjiang.

Hiccup flicked a switch. "Radar on." A crude radar map of the terrain below appeared on Hiccup's screen as Toothless swept beams of radio energy back and forth across the landscape.

All of a sudden, the screen flickered… and died. "Crap! We just lost radar! Hang on, hang on. I can fix this."

_Toothless, stay with me, buddy! Come on! What's wrong!_

Astrid swore as Hiccup frantically checked his station. "Nevermind, Hiccup. We'll get to do this again later."

_Thanks for nothing, you useless airplane… _

"Astrid, trust me. Our course is good. Stay on target." Hiccup's voice had filled with steel. _Come on, come on, bud, work with me… Isolate the subsystem… turn this off… damnable system._

It was the GBU's guidance datalink. The systems integrators had missed something, and it was wreaking havoc with the rest of the Blackbird's systems. It was probably unavoidable – systems integration was exceedingly difficult and _very_ expensive work, as Hiccup knew from experience.

Hiccup killed the battery supplying power to the GBU, and the radar sprang back to life. "We have picture. Check. Check." He squeezed the trigger, authorizing the bomb computer to release the bombs at the calculated moment. "Bombs away!"

Toothless hissed as payload doors opened, spitting two 1,000 kilogram practice bombs from the fuselage (two slots having been taken up by the guided bomb and its associated electronics and datalink module).

Astrid fought the controls as Toothless lurched to one side, dragged off-balance by the asymmetrical payload of one 1,000 kilogram guided bomb. _Woah, woah, easy, boy. Easy. _

Hiccup tracked the bombs on radar even as the cockpit lurched. _Come on, come on, come on… Oh, and they're behind us. _

Toothless levelled out, and they swooped back around for their second run. _Okay, bud. Let's do it differently this time. There. Is this better? _

He turned on the GBU datalink. The radar picture remained crystal clear.

Astrid chuckled. "You know, it's funny. In a nuclear war, they expect us to be dropping nuclear bombs on bridges, tunnels, dams, highway intersections, and all that crap that keeps civilization going. I mean, I hate bridges as much as anyone who was in Siberia, but one megaton for a railway bridge seems like overkill, don'tcha think?"

"Actually no. Concrete holds up very well against nuclear effects – that's why they developed guided nuclear bombs, in fact. I'd wager that the pillars would still be standing if you missed by more than half a kilometer, and… sorry, can't talk now." Hiccup frantically initialized the datalink module, solid-state-computer, and bomb unit. His cathode-ray-tube (CRT) monitor flickered to life.

"Plasma 9, this is ground. You managed to get an average of two hundred and twenty five meters. Congratulations."

Astrid whooped. "Come on, Hiccup, let's drop this thing and get back for drinks!" She gave the stick a nudge, keeping Toothless on course for the target.

Hiccup gritted his teeth. He had done this before. He could do this. His mind went back to the picture of the tree-trunk-sized concrete target, and red-and-white bullseye around it. _Okay, bud. No funny business this time. _

He authorized the weapons release, and Toothless's weapons bay opened with a hiss as an oblong object, painted a brilliant orange, was ejected into the supersonic slipstream. Sharply raked fins unfolded forward and aft, and the GBU fell earthward.

Astrid took Toothless into a turn.

A grainy image of grey cloud on grey sky appeared on Hiccup's CRT even as Hiccup tracked the falling bomb on radar. _Good. Good. _

Grey clouds and grey sky dropped away, and a grey expanse of earth loomed in front of the weapon.

Hiccup gave the joystick a nudge, and the image on the screen shifted gently as the guided bomb responded. He checked the radar again. Good.

The target appeared on his screen, barely three pixels tall.

He tried to lock on. Crap. Not enough contrast. _Seriously?! That thing is a giant contrast marker! _

"I'm guiding the bomb in manually." He announced.

Without saying a word, Astrid cut the throttle to the bone, pitched Toothless up, and worked the flaps. Toothless wobbled as he climbed skyward, shedding velocity for altitude and trading speed for time.

The crosshairs on the screen drifted from the post, and Hiccup fought to keep them centered. _Come on. Come on. _

The post loomed large on the screen, and the image on the screen disappeared as the bomb impacted.

_Okay, bud. Good show for today, all things considered. _

Hiccup sighed with relief. "Thanks, Astrid. Sorry about the exposure time." Slowing down would be… pretty bad in a combat situation.

Astrid shrugged. "Eh. It's fine."

Astrid thought back to Siberia, where she had watched as scores of Thunderchiefs made sortie after sortie trying to destroy the bridges that carried the Trans-Siberian Railway over the rivers of the Far East. Surrounded by flak guns and missile sites, the bridges had claimed the lives of dozens of pilots.

Three days after the first laser-guided bombs arrived in-theater, eight aircraft lugging a mere sixteen laser-guided bombs felled the Novosibirsk Rail Bridge.

Hiccup chewed his lip. "And… the guided bomb electronics were screwing with the radar. Probably won't happen exactly like this again." He stared out the window at the wisps of cloud below, lost in thought.

Astrid smirked. "The new stuff doesn't look so hot when you're the one in the cockpit, doesn't it?"

Hiccup whined. "A little… Well, it's unavoidable, isn't it? You want new capabilities, you need better tech. And testing simply can't find every last problem."

He continued. "If we didn't field anything new, we would never work out all the bugs, and no weapons system would ever be mature. If we didn't take risks, everyone would have stuck with propeller planes – or gotten annihilated by the people who took those risks, the people who built primitive jet engines with thirty-hour service lives. Heck, we'd probably have stuck with spears and pikes instead of wasting time stuffing gunpowder in metal tubes."

He shook his head. "But… I guess… I understand you all better now. I always knew stuff breaking on you in combat was frustrating in the abstract; now… I know. I still think it's worth the risk. I hope you see that I'm… putting my money where my mouth is. If it breaks on my watch, it breaks on me."

Astrid nodded. "Good." She thought of the Wild Weasels that had saved her a dozen times over from SAMs, of the Thunderchief pilots who had _not _died in hails of flak thanks to the new laser-guided bombs. "To tell you the truth, Hiccup, I agreed with you. I thought it was worth the risk too. No, scratch that – I _knew_ it was worth the risk. Most of us did."

She sighed. "And I can't believe I'm saying this, but now I finally feel comfortable saying it to your face."

Range control came in. "Good news, Plasma 9. Your GBU hit fifteen meters of target. That'll kill most anything that isn't a tank or covered in dirt." The range officer chuckled. "Oh, and the contractor from CAA says hi!"

Hiccup smiled. "Tell Bob he owes me for this. And that he has a lot of work to do."

They both laughed.

=O=

Hiccup clambered out of Toothless and onto the high-stress concrete apron.

Snotlout, still dressed in his flight suit, walked towards him, a hard expression on his face.

Oh, boy. Dressed in a bulky pressure suit, there was no way Hiccup could possibly get away from him fast enough.

"You little punk! Making the rest of us look stupid with your laser-guided bombs!"

_Electro-optical/Command guided. _"E…" Hiccup paused. _Learn to shut up. _

"What's the matter, Hiccup? Nothing to say? Oh, I heard about your little malfunction! You and your nerd buddies should've stuck to nuclear bombs like _real_ men instead of trying to embarrass the rest of us with _guided_ weapons!"

_Actually, the Guided Bomb Units were designed to accommodate nuclear bombs, down to a hundred tonnes TNT-equivalent and all the way up to one-point-five megatons. That way, you can use a precision-guided baby nuke to kill a bridge instead of a freefall city-killer. _

But Hiccup knew better than to argue with Snotlout now.

Astrid emerged from the cockpit, and slid down the ladder. "Malfunctioned _and fixed _on the fly, Lout."

"Oh yeah? Try fixing it in combat!" Snotlout spat.

"And what would you know about combat, Snotlout?" Astrid asked.

"I was born a warrior!" Snotlout said. "And I flew intercepts over the Himalayas just like the rest of you!"

She turned and walked away, and Hiccup followed her cue. Snotlout, uneager to have his combat experience in Siberia (or rather, his lack thereof) discussed in public, did not follow.

Astrid turned to Hiccup as the pickup whisked them back to the ready room. "So, how _do_ you know Bob the contractor?"

Hiccup scratched the back of his head. "From my Test Center days. Before I came to Berk, I used to uh… work at the Armament Development and Test Center out East. Bob works at Rockwell, and I was part of the team that qualified Rockwell's first-generation TV-guided bombs back in the day. They… didn't really work very well – were pretty badly outperformed by Norinco and Raytheon laser-guided bombs even on paper, in fact."

Astrid raised an eyebrow. "Does this have anything to do with all the new stuff we used to get?"

Hiccup looked sheepish. "I… kinda exchanged favors… and data… with the guys back at the Test Center. And at a few contractors. Occasionally." Astrid tilted her head. "A lot." Hiccup whimpered.

"So… we _were_ guinea pigs." Astrid narrowed her eyes at her backseater, and Hiccup backed away.

"Now, now, I made very sure everything worked at least as well as the old stuff, and I have the paperwork to prove it! Well, the paperwork will show some data on the effect of _real-world_ maintenance rates on availability, but I assure you I properly assessed the risks!"

He felt no need to mention that Astrid's aircraft had never been in the control group.

Astrid strode up to him, fist balled.

Hiccup closed his eyes, awaiting the inevitable blow.

It never came.

He cracked his eyes open - and Astrid flicked him hard on the nose. "Oh, please. An interceptor base on home turf, on a relatively quiet border? Is there a safer place to take new stuff out for a spin?" Astrid grew unusually quiet. "Is that… the only reason you stayed in Berk?"

"Well, I wanted a combat posting, but Berk was the closest I could get for various reasons." He pointedly averted her gaze. "And I had personal reasons – Gobber is a great friend of mine who I would have sorely missed. And he was the only one who would let me run those projects on the side – he vetted them thoroughly!" _Sorry Gobber. _He kept his tone as neutral as he could.

Astrid frowned. "Anyone else?"

Hiccup slowly shook his head.

Astrid nodded, apparently satisfied with his answer. "Okay."

They arrived at the alert building, and Hiccup, clad in his bright orange pressure suit, headed for the changing rooms.

Astrid placed a hand on his shoulder. "Hey. We'll be having dinner at the Officer's Club at about six. Drinks tonight are on the squadron. You coming?"

Hiccup shook his head stiffly. "Nah. Got some… paperwork to catch up on."

"You should come." Astrid said.

Hiccup shook his head more firmly. "Not my thing. Have fun!"

=O=

General Drago Bludvist smiled as he followed the contractors out into the middle of the big bullseye. Technicians in masks and heavy gloves sifted through the big crater, barely twenty meters from the big pole at the center, even as engineers in the bunker secured magnetic tapes full of bomb and aircraft telemetry.

Beside him, the ADC commader shifted uncomfortably. Drago grinned toothily at the ADC man.

"Why so glum, Brigadier General? Your pilots… performed impeccably."

The ADC commander clenched his jaw, and stared daggers at Drago. "You know what I really think, Bludvist? We'll have to implement substantial modifications to the Blackbird fleet to ensure compatibility with that datalink. And provide additional crew training, in place of counter-air and interception training. And after all that, once we have birds committed to SIOP… I just don't see us getting them back for theater or national air defense."

Drago continued to smile. This one would have to go.

Drago chortled. "There is no need for… provincialism, General. We are all… fighting the same war, no? Pooling our limited resources… will maximize our chances for victory."

"Oh, cut the crap, Bludvist." The ADC man bit back. "I know who you're fighting, and it certainly isn't the Soviets."

"You would do well to show some respect for the Administration, General." Drago's grin widened. "After all, the Administration… has directed us to reconfigure strategic forces… for improved responsiveness and flexibility. We are merely… acting in support of a reasomable and strategically sound policy. To obstruct national policy… well, it might well be contrused as insubordinate."

The ADC commander choked back a reply.

Drago just smiled, and continued to watch as technicians winched out a battered orange lump from the crater.

=O=

Note:

Those impatient to see the story _really_ kick into high gear can head off to Ch. 19, where the crisis that has been brewing in the background through the first half of the story blows its top. You will miss some character development, various bits of shipping, the buildup to the aforementioned crisis, and a really cool amusement park.


	12. Significant Mobilization

Thanks to CajunBear73, Antox, LongLiveOurKing, and Cazertanu for their reviews and input.

=O=

Chapter 12

SASCOM Headquarters

Jiegu, Qinghai Province, Joint Government of the Pacific

Stoick stepped out of the stairwell and onto the helipad of his headquarters building. With drives up the mountain out of the question, breakneck inspection tours and short excursions to the roof were all the sanity he could afford.

The four-story tall blockhouse offered a view clear across the base apron, all the way to the corrugated roofs and smokestacks of the big aluminium plant, built in WWII to take advantage of the region's cheap hydroelectricity and safe distance from Japanese bomber bases out east. If Stoick squinted, he could just make out the dome of Town Hall, and before it, the Liberation Memorial. The Memorial, an obelisk of white granite ten stories tall, commemorated the town's liberation from Manchu rule by the Joint Government Army of Sichuan in the closing stages of the Reclamation War…

…and mourned that war's one hundred million dead.

More people had died in a war fought with bamboo spears, repeating crossbows, muskets, and muzzle-loading cannon than had died in all of World War II.

Naturally, most of the death toll from the… transition between the Qing dynasty and the Joint Government was attributable to the mass famine, economic dislocation, reduced birth rates, and village-level banditry and genocide that accompanied the collapse of the Qing regime, rather than the various major uprisings and foreign invasions that were the obvious precipitants. Census-taking had also fallen by the wayside in the chaos.

Nonetheless, by the time the Pacifican flag was flying from Central Asia to the Yellow Sea, a quarter of the population was just _gone_, swallowed up in the shattered wreckage of what had once been the Qing Empire. North America had fared somewhat better, the concurrent Pacifican Civil War having not been _quite_ as brutal or chaotic. Ironically, one of the reasons for _that _civil war had been some people very forcefully asking _why_ the Joint Government was sending millions of men to die on the other side of the world to conquer a vast empire they didn't want.

The Nation had come a long way since then.

But the Atom had turned the tables on man once more. Between the thousands of Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missiles and medium bombers – in range of most of the Mainland - one hundred million could be lost in under a week of unrestrained nuclear warfare instead of twenty years of civil war.

A cargo train slid into the siding. Thick concrete radiation shields rolled into place around the locomotive (evidently one of the new ones powered by nuclear gas turbines) as men and machines went to work, unloading intermodal containers, armored personnel carriers, trucks, carefully shrink-wrapped helicopters, howitzers, and other _materiel _onto terra firma.

Stoick shifted his gaze towards the airfield. Sticks of Airborne troops stood awaiting their helicopters, decked out in dome-shaped, cloth-covered M1 helmets, olive-green parkas, and the new black, boxy caseless rifles the troops loved to complain about. He waved. They waved back.

All manner of aircraft littered the apron. Air Force electronic warfare aircraft, fighter-bombers, and Vertitruck tilt-wing aircraft jostled for space with Army cargo helicopters – the ubiquitous Chinooks, and their larger cousins, the hulking twin-rotor CH-62 Heavy Lift Helicopters (HLH). Four times the size of a Chinook cargo helicopter, the HLHs were the only helicopters with truly "heavy" payloads in the thin air of the Himalayas, where Chinooks, heavy lifters in thicker air, were reduced to lifting lightweight cargoes and infantry. Lesser helicopters struggled to even reach these altitudes.

The HLHs and Vertitrucks had been the stars of the logistics plan, greatly simplifying the task of resupplying the ever-growing network of supply bases, rough-field helicopter airbases, and forward outposts – complexes of perforated metal and concrete runways, conex huts, and big tents – that dotted the road-poor borderlands. Their incredible mobility and lifting power allowed Stoick (or rather, his Army colleagues) to keep most of their forces well back, safe in the knowledge that any outpost could be rapidly reinforced.

Stoick relaxed, and allowed himself to grin. This was _his _army. _His _operation. He had led the team that willed it to life… and, if things went horribly wrong, would be held personally responsible.

The roar of turboprops filled the air as a C-142A Vertitruck, its wing and four turboprops tilted skywards, descended vertically downward onto the helipad. Stoick ducked for cover as it came in to land, and smiled as a harried-looking General Kwok emerged from the aircraft.

=O=

"General Kwok! How was your inspection tour?" Heather beamed as Stoick led General Kwok into the hubbub of the command center – a sea change from the tedium that had dominated just two weeks earlier.

The Army man nodded. "Fine, fine."

He turned to leave, but Stoick cornered him. "General! I thought the Administration made itself clear! No nuclear rocket launchers on the frontlines!"

The General sighed. "We made _very_ sure the Airborne only has practice rockets. No warheads. The troops need to train with them to stay sharp. Plus, the warheads are firecrackers. Twenty tonnes of TNT – no more destructive than a B-52 strike."

That was technically true – but the nuclear rocket launcher packed that kaboom in a rocket barely heavier than a man, one that could be launched from the back of a jeep or lugged around with a three-man team.

"What's this about nuclear rocket launchers?" Heather joined the conversation.

General Kwok looked away. "I'll make sure they keep 'em in support bases. But mark my words, if we ever need to break 'em out, we'll be sorry." He left in a hurry.

Stoick gave Heather a nod. "What's the latest news from New Delhi?" His mood soured as he thought of the firefight the day before.

Heather passed him a report. "Indicators are unchanged, nothing new. But that's bad news. From what we can tell, the Indians still think we're bluffing, and all they need to do to win is keep pushing.

Stoick raised an eyebrow. The Indians, going past their own claim lines, had begun encircling and firing on outposts, forcing them to be resupplied by air or sufficiently intimidating convoys. "Even after we had Chinook gunships and light tanks escort a convoy?"

Heather nodded. "Yep. They barely reacted even when we waved the Airborne in their face – we even had Airborne troops literally walk right up to Indian officers and show off their badges. They've done practically nothing except reorganize their frontier command. Here's the dossier on their new commander, and some projected force additions – all very modest; nothing we can't handle. No need to change the plan."

Stoick harrumphed. The _plan_.

To _demonstrate_ conclusively to the Indians that their refusal to negotiate was ridiculous, the Joint Government would seize the disputed area, hold it against Indian counter-attack for a few weeks, and then withdraw from the disputed area so negotiations could be carried out in a spirit of cordiality.

It had all made very good sense in Portland.

In order to achieve these goals, SASCOM's plan was to destroy the Indian Air Force, surround the Indian troops in the disputed area with heliborne and ground forces, destroy them with artillery and airpower, and then count on artillery and airpower to break up Indian counter-attacks against the relatively light Pacifican forces. A withdrawal could then be carried out under cover of artillery and - you guessed it – more airpower.

A war fought the _Pacifican_ way. Firepower was expensive, but lives, even moreso.

"Is Diplo sending the Indians a _clear_ message? The Indians do realize that we will go to war if they keep pushing, and that they can't win a fight with us, don't they?" Stoick did not want to go to war because Foreign Affairs had used too many weasel words or been too polite when talking to the Indian representative.

Heather raised her arms. "Foreign Affairs insists they're waving carrots and sticks around as ostentatiously as they can, but that the Indians are still refusing to even consider negotiations. Heck, Portland put out an official press statement about our buildup on the border – published scary pictures of rows and rows of aircraft in the papers and everything. It was all over the news."

Heather had been more than helpful since the escalation, giving Stoick a direct line to State Intelligence's India office. This was good, because the Indians weren't making enough sense.

_Case in point… _Stoick frowned. If the intelligence picture was accurate, the Indians would only have three brigades of mountain troops in the eastern sector by the time SASCOM was in position to launch an offensive. The Indian brigades in place were good – crack troops, even.

But Stoick would have available two Air Forces and a reinforced division's worth of troops by the end of the week - 40,000 men and enough firepower to level a small country. Even in the hands of crack troops, rifles and light artillery were unlikely to hold off helicopter gunships and B-52 heavy bomber strikes in a standup fight.

Stoick frowned. "The Indian Army isn't stupid. They have to know they can't hold with these force ratios. And they're not reinforcing at all? They're offering up perfectly good troops to be slaughtered by artillery and airpower? They seriously think we're bluffing?"

A chilling thought occurred to him. "This can't be right. There's something… off about this whole business. Could we be missing something?"

Heather grabbed her mug. "Indian decision-making as a whole doesn't seem very clear-headed. From what we can tell, they're not really putting policy up for analysis, and they don't hire half as many analysts as they should. It could be that this whole crisis is being run by a half-dozen politicos in the Prime Minister's inner circle, and that they're making this up on the fly. And the politics down south are a mess. If you think Portland's schizophrenic, wait till you see the Indian Communist Party."

She took a sip of coffee. "So… if India's charging blindly towards war, it might be because India really _is _blind, as far as this crisis is concerned. Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by human stupidity, remember?"

Stoick nodded. Wars had been started for stupider reasons. Heck, Germany and Japan had actively started wars against enemies with many times their economic and industrial heft – wars their own strategists had cautioned their leaders were unwinnable. Those strategists, as a matter of course, had been fired (or worse), leaving wishful thinkers to execute unrealistic, open-ended plans, leading their nations to ultimate defeat... after getting tens of millions of people killed.

Stoick growled. "That doesn't really help us."

Heather shrugged. "Boneheadedness and power are a bad combination anywhere."

_A tempting explanation. _Stoick rubbed his chin. "What if they're not stupid? Why would they expect us to fold?" He sat down, and leaned back on his chair. "What would make us fold?"

Heather raised an eyebrow. "Tactical nuclear weapons use? The Indian nuclear program isn't likely to build a bomb until '63. And it isn't like the Soviets to hand out battlefield nuclear rockets to their puppets." She grabbed a sheet of paper. "And it wouldn't even work. If they used nukes, we'd escalate it all the way to nuclear hellfire. You know the numbers: whether we're blowing up Indian divisions with freefall bombs or going full Genghis Khan on Soviet Russia with ICBMs, we win. The Administration won't ignore nuclear weapons use, and the Indians know it. We can afford to escalate. They can't."

Such was the logic of escalation dominance. After all, it was reasoned, what rational enemy would pick a fight he couldn't win?

Stoick tilted his head. "I'll get theater intelligence to do a threat assessment."

Heather nodded. "I'll see what we can dig up on our end. But I really don't see what ace the Indians could possibly have up their sleeves."

"Aren't the Soviets reinforcing the Indians?" Stoick would hate to run into a freshly-equipped Indian Tank Army or a newly-formed helicopter brigade.

Heather nodded. "Most of what they're bringing in appears to be air defense weapons. We can just shoot down any helicopters they bring in, and the heavy armor's going to the Indo-Pak border. We're keeping a close eye on that. But our sector's isn't good tank country anyway."

She snapped her fingers. "I almost forgot. The Indians are very concerned about the Fifth Fleet – New Delhi's keeping a much closer eye on it than you would expect, even with all those Soviet cargo ships going back and forth. The Indian Navy's playing bumper cars with Fifth Fleet right now. "

Stoick's mouth went agape. "Could they try to close the Gulf?"

Tanker ships from the Persian Gulf supplied over half of the mainland's oil. An Indian blockade of the Straits of Hormuz – by air or naval forces – would have catastrophic effects on the Pacifican economy.

Heather laughed. "Not with what they have on hand, and not on the Navy's watch. Remember, the Navy has nukes too. General Bludvist would be thrilled to fight such a war. He gets his apocalypse and the Navy's carriers get plastered with Soviet nukes. But that's not the point."

She lowered her voice. "The point is that you can use this to convince the Administration to lean on Admiral Yeung to give you that cruiser you need. If the Indians are so concerned about the Navy, adding bigger naval forces to SASCOM gives the Administration a nice card to play, don'tcha think?"

A staff officer walked into the room. "Sir, we have a problem."

He led them over to the Air Force corner, where a TV showed a live feed from the big Tactical Air Command board in the room next door. Someone walked into frame, and placed a new magnet on the board.

"One of our convoys got itself into a firefight. CAP covering it is being tagged by Indian fast jets. Nobody's shooting in the air yet – we don't shoot unless they shoot first. We expect the situation to resolve once the troops break contact, as we expect them to."

Stoick frowned as a disembodied stick pushed an unfamiliar pair of symbols onto the board. "What's that?"

"That's the situation, sir. Lightbulb shows an ADC patrol closing in on the furball, and they can't talk to them."

Stoick examined the board. 'Lightbulb' was marked as an EC-131 airborne radar aircraft, supporting Tactical Air Command operations in the sector. "Didn't we have a plan to deconflict our air operations?"

"We… don't know what's happening on ADC's end, sir."

Stoick grimaced. Someone had screwed up. "Get ADC on the line. And someone find their liaison!"

His good mood gone, Stoick collapsed into his chair.

He reached for an antacid. It might just head off his stomachache before it became too unbearable.


	13. Harassing Acts of Violence

Thanks to CajunBear73 for his review and input.

=O=

Chapter 13

Bullets chased each other across the stratosphere, sending sharp cracks across the valleys, mountains, and lakes of the desolate Qingzang Plateau. Beams of energy swept the skies above and below them, as titanium monsters eagerly sought out things to kill.

Astrid whooped as she took Toothless into a turn the size of Scotland at three times the speed of sound. Behind her, Hiccup frantically worked his slide rule as he plotted their course with a grease pencil. Toothless shuddered gently as the turn, at four thousand kilometers an hour, pushed his titanium skeleton to its limits.

Somewhere out there in the wild blue yonder was Snotlout, and Astrid was just itching to lock their fire control radar onto the obnoxious bastard.

Nine minutes ticked by.

_Hey, you try making a bullet the size of a locomotive turn a corner!_

"Astrid, break out of your turn… now."

A gentle two gees tugged at her straps as Astrid deftly maneuvered Toothless through an S-turn the size of Wales. Hiccup, sweating like crazy in his pressure suit, continually updated their course, trying his best to set up a shot against Snotlout's Blackbird.

"Okay, Astrid, if our last plot was good, this should bring him into our kill basket." Hiccup's hands shook. "Astrid, this is stupid. Training while carrying live warshots is an accident waiting to happen."

"CO okayed the practice last week. And lord knows we need it."

The breakneck buildup of the supersonic interceptor force and increasingly frequent Soviet and Indian probes of Pacifican airspace – all of which had to be greeted by interceptors - had left everyone short on practice for everything except interceptions. Regional commanders had taken to authorizing air-to-air combat training during interceptor patrols.

"It's unsafe, and it screws over our ability to do our jobs." Hiccup opined.

"Desperate times, Hiccup."

Hiccup concentrated on his radar. If he had plotted this right, Snotlout would be hard-pressed to stay out of his envelope. He'd seen Snotlout's bird break right before on the previous pass, so this vector should have put Toothless right alongside… _Bingo. _

"We've got him on radar, Astrid! Run him over!"

While the Falcon missile could in theory run Snotlout down, in practice, the high speed and substantial maneuverability of the Blackbird limited engagement envelopes to a few dozen kilometers.

Astrid gunned the throttle, and they sped towards Snotlout. With Toothless outside his radar "cone", Snotlout's backseater couldn't shoot at them. Guided by his backseater's radar warning receivers, Snotlout maneuvered wildly, plunging to fifty thousand feet and turning sharply as he sought to shake their pursuers.

But Snotlout's vector limited his options. Astrid took Toothless into a countrysized turn at three times the speed of sound as they chased Snotlout down the length of Gansu Province.

"Telescopic camera on." Hiccup double-checked his switches, careful to avoid any of the missile arming units on his console.

Behind a quartz window in Toothless's nose, a telescopic TV camera whirred to life, and a fuzzy picture appeared on Hiccup's screen.

The need for a telescopic TV camera had been one of the simpler lessons learned from Operation Impending Doom over Siberia. Over the frozen wastes of the Soviet Far East, the need for visual identification had forced Pacifican aircraft to fight MiGs at close range, negating the Pacifican advantage in long-range air-to-air missile combat. In the clear, cloudless stratosphere, the telescopic TV camera worked like a charm.

Hiccup picked up the radio. "Plasma 8, you're dead! I have your picture."

Curses came over the frequency.

Astrid chuckled. "That's three for three, Hiccup. Can we go for one more?"

Hiccup shook his head. "Nah. Fuel's a bit low. We need to hit the tanker."

Toothless slurped jet fuel hungrily from the Stratotanker as Astrid carefully watched her gauges, her hand carefully perched on the stick. The wake of the airliner-sized tanker was not quite the smoothest patch of air, and Toothless handled differently at a mere Mach 0.75 and 25,000 feet.

Hiccup _was_ doing well, Astrid thought. Heck, between exercises and intercepts, they were holding their own against far more experienced Blackbird pilots after just a month in-theater.

"Astrid, we've got a problem. Longhouse reports four bandits headed for the border, and wants us over the Eastern Sector, stat."

"Well, what are we waiting for?! Let's go!" Astrid's heart quickened.

_Five kills makes an ace. I just need one more. I can do this, easy!_

_The mission comes first, Astrid. Don't get kill-happy. _

_But one more kill would be really nice, too. _

Their bellies bulging with thirty tonnes each of JP-7, the Blackbirds burned towards the Eastern Sector.

"Astrid, we're going to hit the border soon. Just a quick reminder - Rules Of Engagement forbid us from going any further than a hundred klicks south of the border – to give us room to turn around - and from engaging any bird over Indian airspace without explicit orders. All targets must be identified visually before engaging."

"You handle the ROE. I'll handle Toothless." Astrid ran through a short systems check as they approached the borderlands.

Hiccup maneuvered Plasma flight through a complex series of turns, bringing them parallel to the backbone of the Himalayas – the great mountain range that had divided the civilizations of the Yellow River from those of the Ganges and Indus since their inception.

For millennia, alphabets, religions, and armies had marched along a great axis, stretching east-to-west from the jungles of Bengal, through the Fertile Crescent, to the Irish Sea. Alexander the Great, the Mughals, and the Persians had all marched thousands of miles along this great axis, but had only made the scarcest of inroads to the flourishing tributary networks of East and Central Asia just a thousand miles to its north.

The Himalayas even defined language families. Northeast of the Himalayas was the domain of the Sino-Tibetan languages; to their south and west, Indo-European languages ruled instead.

But the age of the jet engine had all but erased this ancient barrier, and with Revolutionary Communism running rampant on the other side, more reliable protection was required than a mere thousand miles of folded geology.

Aerospace Defense Command's vast network of interceptor bases, airborne radar aircraft, command centers, and supersonic interceptors provided that protection.

Hiccup's eyes went wide as he surveyed the dots on his radar screen, all heading north. "Longhouse, this is Plasma 9. We have eight bogies… no six bogies… four, heading north-northwest." Hiccup frowned. They were at right angles to the damned bogies – which meant doppler wasn't working very well.

Astrid frowned. "What the heck is going on down there?"

=O=

Disputed Area

The Indian officer waved his pistol in the air. "You people are trespassing on Indian territory! Depart immediately or…"

"No, you imbeciles are on Pacifican territory! According to _your_ maps, you are on our side of your bloody claim line, and you bastards bloody well know it! Heck, according to my maps, I'd say you people are a hundred miles inside Tibet! Get the bloody hell out, and let my convoy through!"

Perched atop his command vehicle, the Airborne Captain scrunched up his script and tossed it in the general direction of the enemy. Beside him, on the lip of the only macadamized road running through the Eastern Sector, one of his Sheridan light tanks leveled its stubby main gun at the Indian officer.

"No, you are mistaken. This is sovereign…"

_Crack-crack-crack-crack!_

The Captain and the Indian officer locked eyes, surprise etched on both their faces.

Then the Sheridan opened fire, the Indians on the road just _disintegrated_ under a hail of steel darts, the Sheridan exploded as the report of an Indian recoilless rifle echoed rocked the desolate valley, and _go go go go go _his command vehicle sped backwards down the bumpy mountain road, falling in column behind his second Sheridan as they reversed down the road as fast as they could.

Automatic weapons fire was echoing all throughout the valley now. That was _probably _his lead platoon, which he had assigned to surround the Indian roadblock in anticipation of another routine shouting match. The Indians usually turned turtle when his helicopters dropped troops around the roadblock. Well, routine had very much been broken.

Mortar rounds screamed down on the light tanks even as they reversed down the valley, and he ducked down.

"Pop smoke! Pop smoke!"

Billowing clouds of smoke poured from grenade launchers, hopefully hiding them from enemy mortar spotters long enough for them to escape back to the main body of the convoy.

The Airborne Captain cursed his decision not to command his convoy from his helicopter as he craned his head, desperately trying to find the Indian positions buried in the gravelly hillsides through his own smokescreen.

"Sir, first platoon's locked in a firefight with an Indian platoon. They're coming under mortar fire."

The Indians had set up their mortar positions well, making maximum use of the little concealment available to elude his helicopters.

The Captain turned to his radioman. "Where the heck are our gunships?!"

"Hiding over the next ridge, sir! Indian fast air is in play!"

"What?"

The roar of turbojets echoed down the valley, and the Captain looked up.

A pencil-thin jet, the orange-and-green roundel of the Indian Air Force painted on its gleaming silver fuselage, flashed overhead, followed immediately afterward by a jungle-green JGAF F-4 Phantom, liquid heat blazing from its afterburners.

The Indian officer had obviously not been expecting a shootout. The Indians – well, _these _Indians - hadn't wanted a fight. And if the Indians were going to fight, they'd have to fall back to pound 'em out with artillery and airpower anyway.

The Captain made his decision. "Get first platoon to disengage and fall back! Inform battalion of our retreat. And get this convoy turned around!"

Another F-4 Phantom screamed down the valley as Indian mortar fire began to slacken.

=O=

Stoick chewed another antacid, wincing at the powdery taste as he washed the remnants down with saliva.

The officer put down his phone. "Sir, battalion confirms that the on-scene commander has decided to withdraw and regroup. He intends to force the roadblock later. But we still have a platoon in contact, requiring helicopter extraction."

Stoick gritted his teeth. Should they cover the helicopters and leave open the option of evacuating troops by force? Or would it be best to withdraw the aircraft and hope for a peaceful disengagement? Or should he leave the decision to the pilots on-scene?

"Do the pilots know the risk of a blue-on-blue?"

"Yessir."

"Tell them to stay with the helicopters. It'll at least look like a furball on radar."

=O=

Snotlout came in on the radio. "IFF's negative. Indian strike package, headed north.'

Jamming could explain the discrepancies in the number of bogies – that, or pairs of aircraft flying very close to each other. Or doppler beaming.

"Longhouse, this is Plasma 8. Request permission to engage targets." Snotlout's backseater rattled on as Hiccup frowned. _We've got dots all over the place. Five now. IFF's not responding. _

"Plasma 8, this is Longhouse. Verifying. No scheduled flights in the area."

"Let's get 'em!" Astrid said. She gunned the throttle, and they headed straight for the bandits.

_Check altitude… pretty low. Avoiding radar? But why are these two up high? _

Hiccup frowned as the dots began to turn in different directions. "Snotlout, something's not right. Advise weapons hold until you have positive visual identification on the targets."

"Screw visual identification! You have four kills, I have none! I'm getting a kill today!" Snotlout yelled at his backseater. "Get to it, man! You take orders from me, not from Hiccup!"

Snotlout's backseater picked a side. "We're not breaking ROE! This is Plasma 8. Weapons safe."

"They're turning back." Hiccup took a deep breath as four, then eight bandits turned sharply again. Two bandits disappeared from radar as they hit ninety degrees to their radars, beaming them.

They closed in on the bandits as they turned south. Frantic, Hiccup slewed his telescopic camera onto the nearest blip. A fuzzy shape darted between clouds on his monitor. Hiccup squinted as flashes of grey and silver teased his eyes from between veils of cloud. _Come on, come on…_

The stepped nose and raked tail of a MiG came into view. He frowned, unconvinced.

"This is Plasma 8, we have MiGs. Preparing to fire."

"Hold fire, Plasma 8." Hiccup said. "Something's not right." _Please be right please be right please be right… _

Snotlout was furious. "What is the matter with you?! We'll lose the shot! They'll be gone by the time we come around for another pass!"

Astrid kept her eyes on her instruments. _I want to finish this! I can get that fifth kill!_

_No. Hiccup has the tactical picture. _

"Astrid, you tell him!" Hiccup yelled.

Astrid complied without a thought. "Plasma 8, as flight leader, I'm ordering you to hold your fire!" She turned off the comm. "Hiccup, we have visual identification. If we don't shoot now, we'll have to come around for another pass."

Hiccup gulped, and turned his camera onto the next bogey. _Astrid really wants that kill. _

A jungle-green shape emerged from the clouds, hot on the MiG's tail. An F-4.

Hiccup resisted the urge to sigh with relief. "Longhouse, this is Plasma. We've got F-4s down there. They're chasing MiGs across the sky. It's a damned furball." Hiccup shook his head. "I don't see any missile trails yet – TAC might be flying under different ROE." He examined the dots, and began filling in a worksheet. "Astrid, break left. Bring us around."

Astrid raised an eyebrow. "That'll take us over Indian airspace."

"The Indians have birds in the air. Any Indian SAMs are going to be weapons tight." He checked his map. "And the Phantoms probably aren't going to enter Indian airspace. We can separate the wheat from the chaff and shoot 'em down as they break for the border."

They passed the border, arcing across the Himalayan watershed and zipping across Nepal.

An audible click echoed through the cockpit as Hiccup killed the battery to the flight data recorder. "Astrid, we've just had a malfunction in our flight data recorder. Operator error." Hiccup took a deep breath.

Astrid did a double take. Hiccup took documentation seriously. Why would he…

_So I can get the kill. _

An unusual warmth spread through her chest. Encased as it was in a grey-green pressure suit, it didn't get far.

"Must be the supplier. I heard everyone lost a lot of flight data recorders back in Impending Doom."

"Yeah, we did." The Administration's red lines and free-fire zones had badly restricted air combat over Siberia. Aircrews had responded by being careless with their records, crediting kills to pilots without adequate location or timing data.

"Well, Hiccup, that's too bad." Astrid sing-songed. "Thank goodness Longhouse is watching us like a hawk."

"Understood, Astrid." Hiccup checked his screen, disappointed. "If the Indians break south, they'll be right in front of us. Adjust heading zero-eight five – we might just be able to catch them before they hit the border."

The furball broke up, and four dots streamed southward, back across the Indian border. Hiccup trained the telescope on the nearest bogey. A MiG was in his sights.

"Plasma flight, this is Longhouse. Cease fire. Break off intercept and return to friendly airspace."

Hiccup groaned. A moment too soon.

Astrid smiled. "Come on. You did a good job picking up friendlies. I don't know about 'lout over there, but I prefer not having a possible blue-on-blue on my conscience to having an extra red star."

Hiccup didn't say anything as they passed back into friendly airspace.

Astrid took a deep breath. "Hey, Hiccup?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you. For trying, I mean. I… really wanted that."

=O=

"Sir, all aircraft have disengaged. The ADC flight is heading back to base. Ground forces report that the Indians have stopped shooting. An advance party is heading up to parley."

Stoick breathed a sigh of relief. Another skirmish deescalated.

The Indians would receive the hammer blow soon.

But now was not the time.

=O=

The Officer's Club was in a celebratory mood. The Mid-Autumn Festival was just a few weeks away, and everyone was excited for leave, country fairs, and the obligatory drunken fireworks-fueled moon-watching picnics held under the light of the full moon.

Astrid eagerly described the failed intercept to the gathered squadron, even as Hiccup nervously scanned the table, trying his best to read the room.

The squadron XO, a black-haired, slightly wrinkly woman hailing from sweltering Guangdong, nodded as Astrid completed her tale. "Impressive." She turned to Hiccup. "Excellent work on the maneuvers, Captain."

"Thank you, ma'am. It wasn't much, really. Anyone could have done it - and to be honest, my initial approach was sub-optimal. Astrid gave you the gist, but you'll see what I mean when we take this from the top. Considerations for an engagement typically include…" Hiccup launched into a lengthy and enthusiastic explanation of the geometry and logic of the intercept, even as he secretly hoped that the people staring at him weren't laughing at him behind expressionless faces.

Snotlout laughed as Hiccup completed his monologue. "We'll keep that in mind for when we _don't_ want to shoot something down."

Astrid kept her tone level. "You'd have shot down a Phantom if it weren't for Hiccup."

Snotlout scoffed. "Yeah, right. There's no need to exaggerate, Astrid. He's just your backseater. Him doing well doesn't reflect on you or anything." Snotlout threw back a beer. "And don't you remember how he almost killed you?"

The backseaters at the table glared at the abrasive pilot, even as Snotlout held his bottle threateningly in a heavily muscled arm.

He leaned forward. "I mean, look at him. Look at this overcomplicated bullshit!" He picked up Hiccup's napkin diagram, and waved dismissively at the backseater. "You might be a good technician, and a good button pusher, but you aren't a warrior." He gesticulated to the color TV, where a Sheridan tank burned fiercely. "And there's a war – a real war - coming."

Hiccup glanced around the table, and locked eyes with Astrid, who just smiled and nodded. He turned back to Snotlout.

"Sure, Snotlout. I'm not a warrior." He ticked the corner of his mouth upward. "I'm a professional. You, on the other hand…" Hiccup trailed off.

Snotlout lunged at him, but strong arms held him back. "There's a war coming, Hiccup! You'll crack! I know it!"

=O=

_Author's note: Things are heating up - both on and off the battlefield. I came close to cutting this chapter entirely, but Hiccup really needed some extra time to get to know his friends, and build trust with Astrid before what I have planned, and I like how it turned out._

_Real History: Back in Vietnam, people often scoffed at rules of engagement requiring visual contact, but the US had so many more planes in the sky than the North Vietnamese (think nine-tenths of contacts friendly), revoking those rules of engagement would likely have caused more US aircraft shot down to friendly fire, especially with the comparatively primitive air battle management technology of the time. _


	14. Detente

Thanks to CajunBear73 for his reviews and commentary.

=O=

Chapter 14

Hiccup huffed and puffed as he jogged up the tree-covered slope, feeling every gram of his survival vest as the polyester straps cut into his shoulders. The late afternoon sun beat down on them, shining through the many gaps in the hardy conifers that covered this part of Tibet.

Ahead of him, Astrid dashed forward, gracefully bounding over boulders and shrubs in her bulky, green-grey pressure suit, her golden hair and smiling visage concealed under a beanie hat and layers of muddy improvised facepaint.

Astrid turned to look at him, and Hiccup, slightly distracted, tripped over a large rock. On the ground, he stopped to catch his breath, wheezing and panting. The pressure suit was much worse – so much worse! - than the flight suit he had trained in previously. But he hadn't been allowed to pack a proper parka, and if he took off the pressure suit, he would go from stewing in his own sweat to freezing in it. And the Himalayas were much different from Nevada, home to the Air Force's standardized Survival, Escape, Rescue, and Evasion (SERE) training course. The higher altitude, in particular, was murder on his chest.

This was the Indians' fault. If there wasn't a crisis in progress, the idiot bureaucrats wouldn't have organized this impromptu mountain survival course, and he wouldn't be clambering over rocks in the middle of nowhere.

Hiccup didn't see the point. Exceptions notwithstanding, Blackbird pilots at Mach 3 were unlikely to survive an ejection, and landings on the plentiful slopes and crags of the Himalayas would likely break a leg or two. Also, Berk AFB was "just" 3,000 meters above sea level. If they landed on terrain higher than 3,500 meters, vomiting from altitude sickness would dehydrate them in under a day – acetazolomide or no. And a lot of the disputed area was terrain over 5,000 meters.

Not to mention that he and Astrid would probably land miles apart in any reasonable ejection scenario.

A hundred meters behind them were a pair of mountain rangers, tasked with ensuring the expensively-trained pilots didn't get themselves killed while trying to complete the course. And about a few hundred meters behind them, hot on their trail, was an entire company of crack Airborne troops, fresh from the big bases out East, on a little training mission of their own.

"Hiccup, get a move on! We need to finish this by nightfall!" Astrid hissed.

Hiccup coughed twice, and spat. They had spent most of the day winding their way up and down the hillside, trying their best to be unpredictable, under the watchful gaze of their minders.

"Sorry… Astrid… can't… go… faster…" Hiccup panted.

Astrid cursed. Getting caught by the Airborne meant having to walk back to base camp, without the benefit of a helicopter ride – wasting another precious day.

She extended an arm. "Give me your survival vest."

Hiccup shook his head.

"I can carry it for you. It'll make it easier for you."

Hiccup shook his head again.

Astrid, exasperated, grabbed Hiccup's vest and draped it over her own like a poncho. "Done. Now on your feet! Pilots are expensive, and take years to train. We're a limited asset, and we're getting back home to fight another day."

Hiccup nodded, and got to his feet.

=O=

Astrid was right. This _was_ somewhat easier without the bulky survival vest weighing him down. He wasn't in the lead, but he had finally closed the gap with Astrid.

He stole concerned glances at Astrid as she marched under the weight of both their vests. She was tired – Hiccup could tell by the subtle change in her stride, the way she walked around obstacles instead of barreling across them – but she hid it well. "Astrid, I can carry my vest now."

Astrid shook her head. "We're nearly there. I can carry this. You just focus on keeping up the pace."

"I can do it!" Hiccup insisted.

"No, Hiccup. You can't." _and you still don't have enough fight in you. _Astrid huffed.

"Carrying the vest is my job. I can't let you do my job for me!" Hiccup whined.

"Just… stop trying, Hiccup. Let me do the heavy lifting, and keep doing what you're good at."

Hiccup grumbled as he made his way across a small mountain stream. He could do it. He knew he could.

At least, he could try.

He heard a splash behind him.

=O=

Astrid lost her footing, teetered, and plunged into the stream.

She gasped uncontrollably as the icy water burned her skin, chilling her to the bone as she lost all feeling in her body. Water filled her lungs as she hit the bottom of the stream. She hit something hard, and her head ached.

Astrid tried to get up, but her limbs weren't cooperating.

She was sinking? Why was she sinking? This stream couldn't have been more than two feet deep!

Oh right. The pressure suit. No, no, no, clothing floats. The survival vests. Ditch the vest…

Astrid kicked as hard as she could, and took a deep breath as she broke the surface. She tried to stand, but her lungs hurt too much, and she went under the surface once more.

She felt a pair of noodly arms grab her shoulders, and grabbed them right back as they hauled her out of the cold water. She sputtered and choked, coughing up water onto the muddy bank of the stream, even as she gasped for air. Her teeth chattered as she tried to get up, and her waterlogged suit felt like it was made of lead. Cold, cold lead.

How cold was it? Eight degrees Celsisus? It could still kill her, if she couldn't get warm.

They could still do this. Her teeth were still chattering, and the cold, dry mountain air chilled her to the bone. Hiccup was looking towards someone – probably the Rangers.

"Hiccup – don't… we'll…" She sneezed… "have… do it… ag... gain." Saying that she did not want to go through this whole rigmarole again would be quite the understatement.

She sat down, and, still shaking, emptied water from her boots. More water dripped from the interior of the pressure suit. Still shivering, she undid the zipper on the pressure suit, and peeled it off. "Hiccup, gi… help! Hands… aren't… working…"

In cold water immersion, it is imperative to remove wet clothing. Water is a much better conductor of heat than air; absorbs heat, and carries away heat when it evaporates. A naked dry person is less likely to get hypothermia than a person in soaking wet clothing.

Hiccup looked away as her soaked trousers and layered shirts followed the pressure suit, leaving her in her underwear. He tossed her a green/white camouflage tarp (the polyester was rainproof, but it would have to do) and grabbed the wet space blanket in the survival pack, shook it dry, unfurled it, and wrapped it around her.

"Hic…" Astrid blurted.

Hiccup was looking at the treeline with trepidation. "Astrid, the Airborne is right behind us. Do you trust me?"

Astrid nodded fervently.

=O=

Hiccup grunted uncomfortably as, lying prone, he wriggled under the green tarp (hastily camouflaged with mud, some leaves, a branch from the nearest tree, and random shrubbery). Astrid, still wrapped in her space blanket, was already under the tarp, and Hiccup could feel her shivering as he squeezed himself next to her.

They lay together in the darkness.

With some luck, the Airbone would walk right past their improvised hide, allowing them to get back into the game – this time staying behind the Airborne sweep line – while Astrid kept herself out of the wind and got herself warmed back up.

The second-rate camouflage would not fool a determined, well-equipped enemy (especially one with tracker dogs) in wartime, but Hiccup was betting that the Airborne was as bored and exhausted as they were.

A pair of shivering arms wrapped themselves around him, and Hiccup froze.

Astrid's voice was a whisper. "You… idiot. Ground's… fr… freezing."

And aluminium space blankets are good conductors of heat. Hiccup planted his face into the dirt as he pondered his stupidity.

A substantial weight suddenly draped itself over his back.

"You'll ruin the camouflage!" Hiccup hissed.

Astrid said nothing, and stuck her hands into Hiccup's trouser pockets as she desperately sought warmth.

_Well… this is uncomfortable. _"Uhh… I won't tell anyone about this. Don't worry." Hiccup insisted. He paused as he contemplated whether or not full disclosure would help or hurt his case. "And I swear, I totally did not plan this."

"Shut… up… and do… do your job."

Hiccup resigned himself to the role of space heater, and did as he was told.

=O=

Astrid shivered even as she wrapped herself around her weapons systems officer. She moved her arm a little, tucking it neatly under Hiccup's armpit.

_Stupid Hiccup. I'm freezing my socks off, and he's worried about propriety?_

The thought that Hiccup might take undue advantage of the situation had barely crossed her mind before he'd mentioned it. Astrid rolled her eyes under closed eyelids and clutched Hiccup even tighter, her need for warmth drowning out both the smell and the newfound embarrassment nagging at the back of her mind.

_Great job, genius. Now I have to think about it. _

She tried to think through the haze of _cold_ that stung every square centimeter of her skin. _Did_ she _really _trust Hiccup?

She blinked twice. Of course she did. They were a team in the risky businesses of thermonuclear war. Mutual dependence was a given.

Perhaps she was asking the wrong question. Was _Hiccup_ comfortable with being used as a space heater?

Did Hiccup trust her? He obviously respected her professionally, and he was as aware of their mutual dependence as she did.

Was it his old crush on her? Was that why he was uncomfortable?

She'd guessed, of course. Between the forced conversations, new gear, and Stormfly's impossibly high readiness, his interest had been more than probable. But he'd been a thoroughly professional backseater, and Astrid liked to think that she had gotten the worst of his old habits under control.

Questions led to more answers, and answers to more questions as Astrid hovered on the edge of consciousness before slowly, steadily drifting off to sleep.

=O=

A helicopter whirred overhead, and another, and another.

Hiccup shook his sleeping pilot awake. "Yeah, I think it's been long enough. The Airborne is long gone."

The weight on his back lifted, and Hiccup blinked as he saw broad daylight again. As his eyes adjusted, Hiccup made out the outlines of a dozen twin-rotor Chinook helicopters, accompanied by a quartet much larger CH-62 Heavy Lift Helicopters (HLHs).

They were all streaming south.

"Hiccup! Look higher! Hogs!"

Hiccup squinted as a straight-winged ground attack jet zipped past the formation of helicopters. An A-10 Thunderbolt, an escort for the troop-laden helicopters.

Astrid was already working the survival radio, and pressed it to her ear. Her eyes widened with alarm, and she pressed it to his ear.

"Buster 3, Buster 4, this is Buster 1. You heard control. Teepee is off the air. Break off escort and make best speed to Teepee. Things are pretty hairy down there."

Hiccup frowned. "What's Teepee? And how did you guess their frequencies?"

Astrid shook her head. "Teepee is one of our navigation beacons. The bastards have been trying to take that TACAN beacon out of commission for weeks. I intercepted a pair of Sukhois gunning for Teepee once. Drove 'em off, but didn't get to shoot 'em down."

Hiccup did a double take. In addition to helping planes navigate, navigation beacons were also very useful for "blind" precision bombing. Guided by a Tactical Air Navigation (TACAN) beacon, fighter-bombers could put bombs within two hundred meters of a target without ever seeing the ground.

"So…"

"They finally got it. The Indians took it down. They're sending the Airborne because the place is being overrun." Astrid sighed. "Okay. Nothing we can do about it. I'll dry out my clothes, you get your survival pack dry."

=O=

Hiccup scrabbled for his map – which had finally dried out enough to handle.

They were on the right track.

He stopped. Before him, golden beams of sunlight shone through the thin canopy, bathing the hillside – and Astrid - in a soft, warm glow.

He turned towards the source of the glow.

Beyond the trees, beyond the shadowed, tree-covered valley, and just over the crest of the next bare-topped hill shone a glorious setting sun. The gargantuan thermonuclear orb bathed layers of purple cloud in golds and yellows, even as the Earth slowly turned its face away from its glare.

Hiccup turned back to Astrid, who too, had stopped to stare at the sunset. The expression on her face – Determination? Irritiation? - was unreadable, even as Hiccup strained to memorize her stance, her hair, her bulky pressure suit, her… smile?

Astrid was smiling _at _him.

"Uhh… that's west. We're going the right way." Hiccup scratched his head.

"We most certainly are, Hiccup." Astrid gestured to the forest. "After you."

=O=

_Author's note: Shipping! _


	15. Maskirovka

Thanks to Fairytailnaruto25 and CajunBear73 for their commentary and input.

=O=

Chapter 15

Undisclosed location

(_Technically_ In Bhutan)

Heather sipped her coffee as she flipped through her notebook.

All in all, the TACAN outpost was running smoothly, morale seemed high, and the staff had not violated the Joint Government agreement with the Kingdom of Bhutan – guns in the locker, no tobacco, no chicken coops for fresh chicken (slaughtering animals being illegal in the totalitarian monarchy), no fooling around with the locals.

_Mmm… steamed fresh chicken… _

She blinked twice, took a deep breath of the cool mountain air, and looked up from her notebook. Beyond the cliff beckoned the thickly forested foothills of the Himalayas, and beyond them, the Indian border.

Putting a navigation beacon in neutral Bhutan extended TACAN coverage by nearly a hundred kilometers, allowing the Air Force to make blind beacon-guided bomb runs over most of Assam and large chunks of West Bengal. The alternative, putting the beacon in East Pakistan's volatile – and flat – border regions had been considered a poor deal by planners.

It also meant that the beacon had to be kept completely covert. The installation was staffed by "former" Air Force personnel with papers discharging them temporarily from the Air Force, defended by Royal Bhutanese troops, and operated by the State Intelligence Service.

This, of course, was precisely why Heather had been in charge of inspecting the damned place, and not some Air Force officer.

Heather walked back into the breakroom, where an Air Force officer – sorry, former Air Force officer, her long blond hair wrapped in a ponytail, was pouring coffee from the pot. "Just getting a cup of coffee."

Heather gave the woman a nod, and looked over the drab containerized hut. Someone with a little festive spirit had hung a little painted lantern under the light, with a beautiful calligraphed poem written on its side in black ink – the only splash of color amidst green corrugated steel plates.

If it were up to her, she would have had the place evacuated on the spot. The security of Site Teepee was predicated on secrecy. Now that secrecy had been lost, this site was decidedly unsecure. But bombing operations were ongoing over West Bengal, and by absolving pilots of the need to visually identify targets, the site greatly simplified bombing runs, making them much safer for pilots. Pacifican lives were being saved every day this site was in operation.

The contractor approached her. "Ma'am, we hope you'll pass our security concerns to our higher-ups. Indian commandoes have been probing our perimeter…"

Heather nodded. "I know, and I will. This is pants-on-the-head retarded. It's not up to me, but I'll try to get you people home as soon as possible."

The contractor smiled. "Thank you. You know, I'd always thought…"

An explosion rocked the conex hut.

"Well, shit."

=O=

Heather poked her head over the sandbagged parapet. Indian mortar fire had slackened, but the Bhutanese had been pushed well back from their initial perimeter. Fire arced upslope from the lush Bhutanese mountain forest.

Beside her, a contractor, lying prone, cradled a medium machine gun, a belt of ammunition spilling from its side.

"Left! On your left, man!" The contractor fired bursts into the tree line even as his partner watched the belt carefully.

Heather groaned at the machine gunner completely failed to find the enemy. "Automatic rifleman! Eleven o'clock, troops in open! One-fifty meters! Fire!"

The medium machine gun chattered, and a pair of Indians went down near the tree line.

The enemy returned fire. Heather found a target, lifted her boxy assault rifle, and added bursts of 5.5mm caseless to the chorus. Someone found her, and a bullet, missing her head by inches, zipped by with an angry sting. A contractor popped his head over the parapet to take a shot – and went down, gore spilling from what was left of his head. They were pinned.

_Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit… _

She slid a long, thin magazine of caseless ammunition - her last - into the loading slot parallel to the barrel, twisted the charging knob, and, in a fit of sentimentalism, fixed her bayonet to the rifle. The contractor next to her followed her lead.

She chuckled. Here she was, in an age of spaceships and H-bombs, armed with the most advanced and unnecessarily complicated rifle ever fielded… and she was planning on stabbing someone with a bayonet.

_Typical. _

Someone ran up with a backpack-mounted radio. "Shit! Guys! Does anyone know how to guide in air support?!"

Heather grabbed the radio from the radioman. "What's our callsign?"

"We're Teepee, ma'am."

"Air, this is Teepee, come in, over." Heather racked her brain as she tried to remember how exactly she had done this on the distant battlefields of someone else's war, guiding in 'indigenous' pilots with surprising familiarity with JGAF procedures and excellent foreign language skills.

"Teepee, Teepee, this is Buster 1. We have rockets, cluster, maverick, and twenty minutes of playtime."

She grabbed the radio, her instincts kicked in, and before she knew it she was calmly guiding Buster flight through the engagement even as the firefight continued to rage around her.

The roar of turbofans echoed over their position.

"Everyone down!"

A popcorn-like crackle rocked the tree line as an A-10 attack jet, flying low, loosened cluster bombs over the enemy attack. The A-10 followed up with a quick burst from the Gatling cannon before sharply turning away. Shrapnel pinged off the conex huts, and someone screamed in pain.

Three more fast jets and a slow forward air control (FAC) propeller plane appeared over their position, and Heather merrily directed pass after pass against the enemy position as the slow FAC began to take over.

Suddenly, the air crackled with automatic weapons fire, and explosions rocked the outpost. Instinct kicked in again, and Heather rolled off the conex hut – followed soon after by an airman – as a grenade arced overhead. The machine-gunners rose to jump – and were promptly gunned down by a triumphant Indian commando in an unmarked uniform and surplus M1 helmet.

Heather shot him point-blank.

While they'd been distracted by the fight, Indian commandoes had scaled the cliff on the other, less accessible side of the hilltop, essentially sneaking around their backs. They were being overrun.

She doffed the radio. _Radio's broken. Gotta keep moving. _

Chaos reigned as Indian commandoes rampaged through the outpost, throwing grenades left and right.

Heather dashed between and crawled through the conex huts and slit trenches with single-minded determination: Get to the comms shack with all the classified material.

_Move, move, move…_

A commando appeared around the corner.

Heather thrust her rifle forward and pulled her rifle back in one smooth motion, bayoneting the commando in the face. As he slumped to the floor, Heather put a round in his head.

She checked her magazine. Half full.

It was stupid. Simply shooting him would have been faster. The short, boxy rifle was utter crap for bayonet fighting. But she didn't need to think.

The comms shack beckoned. Her heart racing, she surprised the commando guarding the door, gunned him down, and rushed in. Next to a pair of dead contractors, their headsets still attached to their limp heads, a commando knelt beside an open cabinet as he rifled through documents.

With a primal yell, she bayoneted him in the back, withdrew her rifle, and then stabbed him once more in the chest, stomping on him and screaming in triumph as she yanked her bayonet out with a soft squelch. The commando gurgled, unable to scream, and stopped moving.

Energized, she searched the bodies for a grenade.

She had just finished checking the commando when she heard the thump-thump-thump of helicopter rotors.

_Payback time. _

She rushed out the door just in time to fire on a pair of commandoes running for cover – and hit the deck herself just as a Chinook gunship roared over her, spraying rapid shrapnel-filled death from its nose-mounted automatic grenade launcher and twin sponson-mounted autocannon. A burst of machine-gun fire landed meters from her as a door-gunner mistook her for a commando.

She whooped, and plunged into the fray,

The Airborne corporal found her trying to outflank a pair of commandoes holed up in a slit trench. "Come on! They're in there! Go! Go! Go!"

=O=

"General Haddock, the Bhutanese are pretty upset about your air support. And they want your troops to help with EOD cleanup in the area – they want all those cluster bombs gone. I cannot emphasize how much we need to honor their request…"

Stoick charged through his headquarters even as the diplomatic liaison continued to discuss the engagement. This was worse – far worse – than the skirmish last week. At least that one hadn't involved attack jets, cluster bombs and guided missiles. Heck, as a bonus, it had revealed severe problems with ADC-TAC coordination in theater, from incompatible IFFs to wildly different ROE to air tasking groups that simply failed to talk to each other.

A young captain came up to him. "Sir, the last Chinook is back in our airspace. Indian fast jets have pulled back; our top cover is in place. No shootdowns. Colonel Zhu reports that the QRF will be regenerated in six hours. ADC has a schedule for rotating patrols over Bhutanese airspace as requested by local forces, starting nine hours from now."

Stoick nodded.

"Sir, the Secretary is on line one!"

"Heather!" Stoick lowered his voice an octave. "Are you all right, lass?" Heather's blank face was caked with soot and blood, and she looked as exhausted as she walked into the command center. Heck, she was _limping._

"Yeah. Yeah. I've seen worse." Heather waved Stoick away, and took a seat.

Now that her hands were no longer shaking, Heather's mind was racing through the possibilities. The vulnerability of the site had been clear. What of Indian intent? Willingness to violate Bhutanese sovereignty at the current time? Had the area been tagged for surveillance flights?

Could she have anticipated an Indian attack up the cliff? Had rampaging through the base really been her best move?

Heather looked down at her bloodstained shirt. No wonder Stoick had sounded so worried. "Not mine." By golly, she'd gone berserk during the fight. No perspective. Just adrenaline and instinct. Again. Again. As usual.

Just her luck. She'd finally worked up the nerve to transfer to an office posting, and she'd stabbed two men to death in under twelve months on the job.

"Sir! The Secretary is on line one!" the staff officer was insistent.

Stoick gave Heather a shake. "You've done a sterling job since you got here – and I've heard from my pilots that you did a spectacular job on the ground. Clean up, and try to get some rest." He went for the phone.

"Mr. Secretary?"

The Secretary spoke, his voice tinny over the encrypted phone line. "General. While we're not exactly pleased that this occurred on the soil of a third party, this represents a significant escalation of the border situation. If the Indians think that they can run roughshod all over us and our allies, and mount direct attacks on our outposts… well, we can't have that. We're escalating."

Stoick gulped. "What did you have in mind?"

The Secretary inhaled. "On the advice of General Bludvist… we have decided on a demonstration of strategic superiority to the Soviets and Indians. A nuclear test series has been scheduled. It is to coincide with an exercise of tri-service strategic nuclear forces. You will be expected to provide tactical cover for the exercises."

Stoick fumed. He desperately needed his disparate air forces – Aerospace Defense Command's interceptors, SAC's bombers, and TAC's tactical jets - to exercise together, and Drago was stealing them for a damned vanity show. Annual exercises over Nevada and Inner Mongolia were well and good, but he really, really wanted _his _force to get some practice.

Another voice came on the line. "Mr. Secretary, it's Heather. From what we can tell, the likelihood of an Indian response during the exercises is not low. SAC and ADC forces must be prepared to dovetail with TAC if the balloon goes up. It is our recommendation that TAC must be intimately involved in the exercises."

Stoick cleared his throat. "That is true, sir. We desperately need inter-command exercise time."

Heather spoke again. "We also need clearance for additional reconnaissance flights, preferably both Blackbirds and low-level jets. And preferably daily."

The Secretary exhaled over the phone. "Understood. We'll get back to you."

They put down their phones. Heather smiled faintly at Stoick. "Your boys did a good job too. If the Indians hadn't pulled off that climb, they'd have saved our asses back there."

Stoick tilted his head as he scrutinized Heather's expression. "Lass… I heard, from the boys on the ground – the hand-to-hand got pretty bad down there. It looks to me like this isn't your first rodeo, and most people turn out fine, but they say that talking about it seems to make it easier." He chuckled. "People always forget that the cushy flyboys lost over a hundred thousand men in World War II – and had one of the highest loss rates of any of the services to boot."

"It's not that. Not for me. I'm fine, Stoick. Really." She turned to leave. "But… thanks for asking."

=O=


	16. Romantic Flight

Thanks to CajunBear73 for his reviews and commentary.

=O=

Chapter 16

Berk AFB

Toothless taxied out of his concrete cave and trundled over to the runway.

Astrid's breathing was rapid and shallow as she ran through her preflight. Hiccup hadn't said anything since they'd finished going over their flight plan after the prolonged briefing session.

_Okay, Hofferson, Haddock. You'll be flying recon over India tomorrow evening. _

The lights of the runway stretched away before her, punctuating the dark night like a pair of railroad tracks to infinity.

_It's a simple surveillance mission along the border. You'll barely be in their airspace – but make no mistake, you will be in non-disputed Indian airspace. We fly this route every few days - well, daily now. They've pinged us, but they haven't shot at any of our runs so far. _

The cockpit was quiet but for the whine of the engines. For a split second, Astrid missed Hiccup's banal chatter with ground control.

_The whole mission will be carried out under complete radio silence. You take off ziplip, you fly ziplip, and you refuel from the tanker ziplip. You only start yapping on landing. _

Radio chatter would give the flight away to the Indians and their Soviet puppetmasters, allowing them to track, target, and kill them. She focused on the runway lights, the red signal lamp on the tower, and the mission.

_Good luck, and good hunting. _

The tower light turned green.

Astrid gunned the engines, and Toothless, riding twin diamond-shocked plumes of flame, shot down the runway and ascended into the night sky.

=O=

"Astrid, we're coming up on reference point one. Autopilot's gonna turn us around in three… two… one… mark."

Astrid checked her instruments as Toothless went into a turn that covered a goodly chunk of Sichuan. The engines were purring, the airframe was holding steady, and the controls were on the dot.

"We are on course. Descend to 65,000 feet."

Flying closer to the ground meant better radar pictures.

They flattened out, and in his mind, Hiccup pictured a giant transparent wall – the international border that stretched from the ground to one hundred kilometers up.

Beyond that wall was sovereign Indian airspace. And, as illegal entrants into Indian airspace, they would be fair game for every Indian SAM battery and interceptor within range. If shot down, the Indians would hold them as prisoners of war.

Hiccup shuddered as he remembered the horror stories from Siberia, where thousands of captured Pacifican prisoners of war had been subjected to years of physical abuse and vicious psychological brainwashing in the Gulag. Rumors persisted of POWs still languishing in secret Siberian gulags, left for dead by the government and forgotten by all but their KGB torturers...

He wasn't going to get shot down if he could get away with it. He had just gotten tickets to Lop Nur - Lop Nur! - and he had every intention of living to use 'em.

"Coming up on the border. Check… Side-looking Radar on. Mapping Camera on. Antennas live and collecting. Recorders running."

Hiccup smirked. The modular recon kit, while overpriced, excessively complex, and inferior to the SR-71's dedicated reconnaissance fit, was still extremely impressive. The side-looking synthetic aperture radar scanned the terrain below from horizon to horizon, piercing clouds, rain or snow to build up a very detailed radar "picture" with a resolution of a few meters. Combined with pictures from the superfast Nikon film cameras (capable of taking a horizon to horizon film strip good enough to read unit numbers on tanks) and electronic intelligence antennas, the Blackbird could map a long strip the width of a small country and thousands of kilometers long – in detail sufficient to identify all military forces within.

Hiccup nodded to himself. "Astrid, we are at reference point two. I'm go back here."

Astrid completed her check. "I'm go up front."

There was a pregnant pause. "Hiccup… are you ready for this?" Astrid said.

Hiccup didn't skip a beat. "Born ready, Astrid."

Astrid smiled. She knew he was ready, but it was nice to hear him say it.

While it would have been nice to scan the border from the Pacifican side, geography had other ideas. The four-thousand-meter foothills of the Himalayas blocked radar scans into the valleys between them from any angle except directly overhead. Satellites might have done part of the job, but revisit times were long, and the practically fixed orbital flightpaths of satellites made them predictable, allowing enemy forces to hide when satellites were known to be overhead.

This job was necessary. And they would do it.

They zipped across the disputed area in two minutes, hit the border at Mach 3.1, and entered Indian airspace.

"Let's see if those Indians are hiding anything in these valleys." Hiccup checked his bolted-on SAR display – a tiny, barebones display that showed just enough blinky lights to tell Hiccup it was working properly. The magnetic tape recorders simply could not be displayed on-board the aircraft.

Even as Toothless scanned the ground below with beams of energy, Hiccup knew they were being watched.

Toothless chirped and whined almost fearfully as his sensitive electronic ears picked up a multitude of radars – friendly and hostile, civilian and military, search and fire control.

The sky around them filled with the electronic shrieks, moans, and chitters of enemy radar and radio signals, and in his darkened, claustrophobic cubby, Toothless's electronic whimpering seemed to close in around Hiccup. His stomach try to claw its way back up his throat as his mouth went dry as the shrieks reached a fever pitch.

All the while, magnetic tape recorders whirred, dispassionately recording the howling electronic maelstrom around them for later analysis in the comfortable suburban offices of some signals intelligence agency.

"How are you doing back there, Hiccup?"

"We've kicked a hornet's nest, that's for sure. Heh." He paused. "We're being tracked by three Soviet Spoon Rest search radars and one Fan Song fire control radar. We've got HF transmissions from those same sites; so we can expect more radars to… okay, two Fan Songs."

The "Fan Song" was the primary fire control (i.e. missile-guiding) radar of the frontline SA-2 missile system, a big missile system designed to kill planes – bombers or fighters – at medium-to-high altitudes. As far as they knew, the SA-2 lacked the performance to engage Blackbirds – but missiles were always upgraded over time…

Astrid involuntarily scanned the sky for missile trails. "Hiccup, calm down. You trust me to do my job, right?"

Hiccup nodded fervently. "Yep. Three Fan Songs. Six missiles per battery means eighteen missiles total. We're also getting some gun radars now. They're just pointing them around." He checked the clock. "Their system reaction time is a lot better than before."

Hiccup checked his plot. "…but not good enough. According to the map they gave us, we're already out of the SA-2 missile engagement envelopes. We kinda sped through before they could turn their radars on."

Astrid nodded.

Toothless suddenly warbled in alarm. Hiccup's jaw dropped. "Oh, this is new. Pattern's new. Sounds like a search radar…"

They sped into Bhutan, and then crossed the length of Nepal in under twelve minutes.

Hiccup inhaled. They were on the home stretch – and by all accounts, a stretch as dangerous as the initial run over Assam. "We're coming up on Kashmir."

Following the bloody mess that had been the Partition of British India into India, Pakistan, Burma, and Bengal (the latter at the secret – or not-so-secret – insistence of the Joint Government), India had waged a series of inconclusive wars against Pakistan, many revolving around the disputed territory of Kashmir. Kashmir was heavily militarized – practically carpeted with SA-2 missile sites, army and airbases, and anti-aircraft guns.

Not particularly benign airspace, at any rate.

Hiccup frowned as he cleaned up the cacophony of chitters and shrieks to focus on one in particular. "There's that new search radar again. They were expecting us… as usual."

Astrid chewed her lip. "Of course they did. We fly the same route every time. Predictable patrol routes are a bad idea, escalation be damned."

Toothless shrieked in alarm. "Oh boy. New fire control radar." Hiccup racked his memory of the intelligence brief.

_The SA-5 system is probably still undergoing prototype testing, and is unlikely to be encountered in the Indian Theater of Operations._

Hiccup swore. "Astrid, prepare to turn left. We're probably looking at a new SA-5 Gammon! Plotting a course for you now. This keeps us in sight of the target area while keeping the SA-5 at range. Prepare to evade."

Astrid recalled a Soviet propaganda reel about the new SA-5 – a huge, tree-trunk-sized missile with four strap-on boosters, big fins, and a huge engagement envelope capable of reaching the Blackbird (at a reduced range compared to engaging a slow jet, of course).

"You got it." She said.

If the SA-5 fire control radar and its inexperienced operators (who had turned their radar on early, before their shiny new missiles were in range, instead of using the search radar to track for them) were co-located with the missiles, then Astrid and Hiccup wanted to put as much distance between themselves and the radar as possible.

Astrid gunned the throttle, giving the missile site a reasonably wide berth.

"Electronic countermeasures on. Record and…" Hiccup frantically set up the sophisticated ECM system for a system it had never seen before, and hoped it would work. "…set."

The seconds ticked by as they approached the site. On the audio channel, the SA-5 radar, in search mode, gave off a series of slow beats – the steady growl of a tiger observing his prey.

"IRST on."

Sweat beaded on Hiccup's forehead as they closed with the radar. _Once we get past the radar, they'll be in a tail chase. They won't take the shot after we pass them. _

The SA-5 radar roared to life, and pounced. "SAM SAM SAM! ECM on! Air search on!" Hiccup checked the IRST and air search radar. "Two SAMs in the air! Bearing zero three zero, passing 3,000 feet."

Astrid inhaled. "Hiccup, turn or burn?"

Hiccup pondered his decision. The missiles had cleared ten thousand feet.

"I'm watching them. Give me a minute to see how they fly."

The missiles cleared twenty thousand feet.

"Burn. We can probably outrun the missile. It's more than fast enough to catch us, but it probably doesn't have enough fuel to change its course if we hightail it. Also, if this radar plot is right… it doesn't look like a very sophisticated intercept." Hiccup laid out his decision.

"Burning." Astrid opened up the throttle, and Toothless soared upward.

Hiccup looked at his instruments, and out the window. The black sky seemed to turn even blacker.

_Mach 3.4… 3.45… _

_Mach 3.6._

Hiccup's eyes widened.

_Mach 3.7. 100,000 feet. _

Toothless levelled out. They were thirty kilometres above the surface of the Earth, covering a full kilometre every second. "SAMs are passing 80,000 feet… and turning towards us."

But the SAMs had been aimed too low, too far behind them – and, as they struggled against their immense speed to change course to engage Toothless – now higher and faster than before – they simply ran out of fuel, passing 120,000 feet three kilometres behind them.

"And… we're clear of this site!" Hiccup cheered.

Astrid was grinning from ear to ear. "Bringing us back down."

=O=

A hundred kilometers away, just across the Pacifican-Indian border, a modified airliner held orbit over the highest peaks of the Himalayas.

With a long, protruding nose and cheek compartments stuffed with electronic gear and antennas, the jet was easily identifiable as an RC-135 signals intelligence (or SIGINT), aircraft, tasked with detecting, recording, and analyzing the myriad of electronic signals given off by a military force – radar signals, jammers, communications equipment, and more.

On Indian radar, however, it looked like any ordinary tanker.

Today, it had been tasked with monitoring the Indian response to a supersonic Blackbird overflight. A very eventful overflight, it seemed.

In the cramped compartment of the RC-135, Fishlegs Ingerman excitedly ran towards the back of the plane. The blond-haired, overweight, bespectacled electronics officer shoved aside airmen and knocked around chairs as he moved around the rows of consoles and racks of electronics that filled the passenger compartment. "Hey Ruffnut! Check this out!"

Ruffnut rolled her eyes. Tagging along on HUNGRY VULTURE flights was fun for her EW officer, who loved to familiarize himself with the calls and shrieks of all sorts of new Soviet gear, but Ruffnut preferred to be the one flying the jet she was… flying in, thank you very much.

Ignoring her disinterested grimace, Fishlegs jammed a pair of headphones over her ears, and an eerie series of chirps, followed by a shriek, filtered through her senses.

"Behold the roar of the Gammon!" Fishlegs waved his arm dramatically. "Challenger of the stratosphere. Kingslayer."

Ruffnut yawned. "Lame. How do we kill it?"

=O=

Toothless soared gracefully at 80,000 feet at Mach 3.3, leaving the tanker far behind, far below.

Hiccup stared out his window, lost in thought.

"Hiccup, you ok? You haven't said anything for a while back there."

"Yeah, yeah. Sure."

"Something on your mind?"

They had fought together as a team. Him and Astrid, an actual honest-to-god fighter crew – their thinking, fighting, and flying as one. But he couldn't quite say that. It would be awkward, and besides, what would be the point?

Hiccup chuckled. Here he was at 80,000 feet, flying at three times the speed of sound, and all he could think about was the girl a mere foot in front of him.

"Just something crazy I came up with. Wanna see something cool?"

Astrid shrugged. "Why not?"

"Climb to 90,000 feet."

Astrid gunned the engines, and Toothless rumbled as the interceptor clawed through the increasingly thin air.

Then the lights went out. "What the…"

"Relax, relax. I just cut the lights."

Inside her helmet, Astrid smirked. "What are we up to this time, Hiccup?"

"Let your eyes adjust."

Astrid did, and realized that she could see her instruments. A faint, hazy glow was shining through the heat-resistant quartz glass.

"Now look up."

Astrid looked up, and exhaled in wonder.

A shimmering band of stars and dust filled the window, cutting across the heavens like a vast celestial river.

_The Milky Way. _

Astrid searched for the Big Dipper, followed it to Polaris, and confirmed that she was looking north with a glance at her flight plan.

A trio, then a pair, and then another four shooting stars lit across the sky. Astrid inhaled sharply.

_How… why? Shooting stars burning up in the upper atmosphere are easier to see at altitude. Right._

Toothless broke 95,000 feet.

"Cool, huh?"

"Yeah. Yeah."

"The Chinese call the Milky Way the Star River. They speak of two lovers, a cowherd and a seamstress, separated by the great river in the sky. Every year, at midsummer, a flock of magpies forms a bridge across this river, and lets the lovers see each other for one night. And only one night."

Astrid said nothing.

Hiccup chuckled. "You know, our star-tracker actually uses the seamstress, the magpie bridge, and the cowherd – among various other constellations. In official parlance, we call 'em Vega, Deneb, and Altair. They're three points of the summer triangle; our star-tracking automatic sextant locks onto them to compute exactly where we are. We fly so high up the sextant can see them all the time."

"Ain't that something."

They sat in silence, admiring the celestial vault above them.

Hiccup rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Astrid… I… uh… there's something I'd like to ask you."

Astrid, her gaze still fixated on the stars, sounded distant. "Yeah?"

Hiccup began tapping his helmet. "I got a reservation for a show at Lop Nur. The reservation was for one car, and since I'm going to have to rent a car anyway, I thought I'd ask you to come along. You know, so we can split the rental, get economies of scale. Just a fun activity for friends, you know…" Hiccup trailed off.

Astrid gently closed her agape jaw, careful not to reveal her surprise. Reservations at Lop Nur weren't easy to get, even for servicemembers. "Sure, sure. Sounds great."

Hiccup squirmed. "Great."

Astrid smiled. "Now shut up so I can enjoy the night sky."

They didn't turn the lights back on until they began their descent.

=O=

The analyst took his eyes off the microscope, and rubbed his eyes. Since they'd stepped up reconnaissance flights over the Indian border, his office had been completely swamped.

He took a sip from his cup of coffee. Nope. After sixteen hours spent staring at camera film through a microscope, coffee just wasn't cutting it anymore.

He inspected the synthetic aperture radar picture on the screen again – just for correlation with the photos. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a highly detailed radar terrain picture – the caption read Assam, Northeastern India - with little metal objects on top, trucks mostly. To any other observer, they looked like blobs; but that's why they hired analysts.

The platform whirred as the roll of foot-wide strip of processed film slid into position under his microscope. A series of long, narrow tents, trucks, and lines came into focus. Trees. Fields. Roads. Trucks. Fuel trucks. Tents. Tents covered in camouflage netting. Barracks. Support vehicles. Lots of fuel trucks. Nothing that looked like a FROG short-range nuclear artillery rocket or a surface-to-air missile base. Not that he had expected to see any FROGs anyway, no matter how big an intelligence coup that would've been. The diminutive FROGs fit on a small truck – he'd have to be exceedingly lucky to catch one out of cover.

That was a lot of fuel trucks – what were they fuelling, a helicopter regiment? A tank division?

And that was an awfully long tent. Pretty big one too.

Did this remind him of something?

His eyes had gone bleary again.

He really needed to move on to the pictures taken along the Bhutanese border. Since the damned Indians had launched an attack on a civilian air traffic control beacon (or so the press was saying) in Bhutan, a whole bunch of surveillance targets thereabouts had been allocated to his office, which would probably take him another… oh, god… four hours.

He wrote "fuel dump/support site" on his list and moved on.

=O=


	17. Our Friend The Atom

Thanks to CajunBear73 for his reviews and input.

=O=

Chapter 17: Our Friend The Atom

Astrid gawked at the spectacle before her. In the middle of a barren desert, a massive amusement park sprouted from the earth, its Ferris wheel, rollercoaster, drop tower, and other steel amusements sprawled out across the salt flats like a madman's garden.

Huge tombstones of glass and concrete – hotels, casinos, a mall, a theater – bracketed the amusement park, casting long shadows across the park and across the desert beyond.

Beyond the park and buildings was a vast emptiness – a landscape of mesas, windswept rocky outcroppings, and salt flats stretching as far as the eye could see.

They drove towards the massive gateway, an arch of anodized aluminium, which marked the entrance to the unholy product of local gambling ordinances, corporate-industrial sponsorships, and unbridled free-market capitalism.

ATOMLAND  
原子天地

Hiccup stopped by the side of the highway and got out of the car, his Nikon angled skyward. He walked around, angling for a good shot - film was expensive, after all – even as Astrid tapped her foot.

Astrid dragged him back in the car the moment his camera clicked. "Come on, let's go!"

Onward they went. Looming tombstones gained definition, opulent entrances, and glittering neon signs. The western-themed _Half-Life Casino, _the black, monolithic _Casino Schrodinger, _and the raygun-gothic _A-bomb Hotel _cruised by, monuments to the foibles of human neurological reward pathways and cognitive biases.

"Wanna go in?" Hiccup shrugged.

Astrid shook her head. "Nah. That's not quite my thing."

They turned into a gargantuan parking lot, and Astrid grinned as a steel scrambler, gleaming in the midmorning sun, came into view.

Hiccup just gulped.

An old, somewhat faded billboard passed by unremarked.

Lop Nur Test Site  
Public Outreach Center

=O=

"Oh come on, where's your fighting spirit, Hiccup?"

"I'll… take pictures of you on the ride from down here! Yeah, I, as the designated photographer, have a perfectly good excuse not to go on the… _Furball_." Hiccup insisted.

The insane-looking contraption whirled its occupants about at unnecessary speeds even as it twisted about its own axis, in an apparent attempt to replicate the sensation of being in a furball – the insane melees that characterized short-range fighter combat when too many fighters were squeezed into the same patch of sky.

Astrid narrowed her eyes. "I thought you wanted a _combat posting_ to South Asia. How did you expect to survive fighter school if you can't take a merry mixer?"

Hiccup stood his ground. "I… had very good reasons to take fighter school. Those reasons do not apply here."

Astrid put her hands on her hips. "Such as…"

Hiccup clenched his teeth. "I wanted to impress my father. And show everyone that I could do it, that I was not just a pencil-pusher! There. I said it."

Astrid tilted her head, and put her hands on his shoulders. "Okay. Hiccup, you've got one combat mission under your belt, now. A few more, and that's all the proof you'll ever need."

"Thanks, Astrid." Hiccup smiled.

"And just how will you thank me?" Astrid's eyes were aglow.

Hiccup groaned, his attempt to change the subject having failed spectacularly. "By going on the furball."

His face remained impassive as he strapped himself into the unnecessarily nauseating amusement park ride.

"Think of it as a team-building exercise! This way, you can assure me, your frontseater, that you will follow me through hell, whatever form it may take and no matter how pointless the reasons!" Astrid laughed.

On cue, the contraption began to rise into the clear blue sky.

=O=

Hiccup's head spun as he got off the chrome-plated rollercoaster.

"Whew! That was awesome! Okay, so we can cross the _Sabrejet _off the map. Where to next? The_ Calutron_? The _Rocketship_?"

Hiccup suppressed a groan as chased after Astrid. After the _Furball,_ they had taken on the _Centrifuge, _the _Yo-yo, _and even the ludicrously tall drop ride the _Ejection Seat. _

They passed under a real WWII-era F-100 Super Sabre, displayed on a sleek, sweeping concrete pylon. Astrid stopped to admire the shiny silver fighter jet, and the kill tally painted on its side. "We've come a long way in a decade, huh?"

"How about we get some food?" Hiccup wasn't really hungry – heck, his stomach practically churned at the thought of another ride – but anything was better than another ride.

They wolfed down hot dogs, admiring the bustle of the park from the relative comfort of a sunbaked park bench.

Whoever had built this theme park in the middle of nowhere had not skimped on the decor. All around them were bright colours, sweeping curves, and viewscapes right off the cover of Amazing Stories – a style they were calling Raygun Gothic. Even the game booths had a prominent saucer top and antenna.

Astrid stood up, and binned the wrapper. Clad in a silvery sun poncho, a wide-brimmed aluminized hat, and a pair of working flash goggles (with the flash protection flipped off) she looked every bit a woman of the Atomic Age, as ready for a sunny day as she was for the searing flash of an atomic attack.

She looked _beautiful_. But then again, Astrid would have looked beautiful in anything.

Astrid noticed him staring out of the corner of her eye, and struck a pose. "How do I look?"

Hiccup blushed. "Uhh…"

Astrid chuckled, spun on her heels, and made a beeline for the game booths. Hiccup, his cheeks still burning, tossed the remains of his hot dog into the trash, and took off after her. He caught up to her under a sign marked "Space Gun Testing Range", where Astrid was already hefting a popgun.

"I want the plushie." Astrid gestured to a plush green one-eyed alien, hanging from the stall to attract children with limited abilities of cost-benefit analysis and equally poor hand-eye coordination.

Hiccup gulped. "I was never very good at this sort of..."

Astrid never took her eye off her sights. "Not you, stupid. I shoot. You _pay_."

The stall operator glared as Astrid began blasting BBs downrange with impressive skill, and Hiccup hurriedly handed over the obligatory dollar. The stall operator grunted again as he tallied the results, and handed over the cotton-stuffed extraterrestrial to Astrid.

Hiccup gawked. "Where'd you learn how to shoot?"

Astrid turned towards Hiccup, and handed over the plushie. "You paid for it, you keep it."

Hiccup, his embarrassment complete, turned red.

Astrid gave him a playful punch, and began to drag him through the park.

Hiccup, preoccupied with the plushie, didn't notice where they were going until they stopped in front of a grandiose, windowless building.

HALL OF ENERGY

Astrid kept a close eye on Hiccup, watching intently as his agape jaw slowly closed, and as the goofiest, most childlike grin spread across his face. She gave him a nudge. "I know you didn't come for the rides."

They walked past models explaining nuclear reactor types – burners, thermal-breeders, fast-breeders, reactors with solid fuel, molten fuel, even super-hot gaseous fuel – all the better to reach those high temperatures!

Astrid's mind boggled as she walked past a parade of reactors of all shapes and sizes, for seemingly endless applications.

Cheap old-fashioned reactors, powering the homes of today.

Efficient breeders, producing more plutonium than they consumed, for limitless electricity tomorrow.

Super-high-temperature reactors for oil refineries, industrial heat, jet engines, and rocket motors.

Small reactors with few moving parts, for isolated villages, military bases or space probes.

Reactors smaller than a watermelon, and bigger than a five-storey building.

Reactors for ships, submarines, planes, trains, rockets! Reactors for road trains, helicopters, tanks, drilling machines!

Hiccup shrugged as he glanced at the exhibit. "When it boils down to it, a nuclear reactor is basically a box of hot metal – which can be super-hot liquid metal soup or metal gas - that almost magically stays hot by itself, which you can turn on and off until all the fuel is unusable. You can use a reactor for basically anything that needs heat, or can use a form of energy that can be converted from heat. There are some niche applications for using the neutrons or fission products directly, but they're not very important."

Astrid still looked confused. Hiccup shrugged. "Okay, so… think of Toothless's turbojets. They suck in air and burn fuel with it. The hot air goes out the nozzle a lot faster, which powers us forward and spins a fan driving the shaft that powers the engine, right?"

"I wasn't born yesterday, Hiccup." Astrid growled.

"Okay, so what if you took away the jet fuel and replaced it with a hot metal box – a nuclear reactor? The air would still get hot, go out the nozzle, and turn the shaft. That's a nuclear jet engine. Heck, Toothless could probably fly around the world nonstop with that kind of power plant. You'd need to add a heck of a lot of shielding, or the neutron radiation would fry us by the time we got to altitude, but that's why they're designing a next-generation bomber to fit it and the shielding instead of retrofitting it to existing aircraft." Hiccup scratched his chin. "Or just hook the shaft up to a generator, a set of wheels, or propellers to power a city, a train, or one of the Navy's new destroyers."

They passed a large diorama explaining how nuclear fuel was produced – how uranium ores were strip-mined, processed, enriched in fissile isotopes, and forged into fuel rods or pebbles. Hiccup examined the scale cutaway of the massive enrichment plant – rows upon rows upon rows of gas centrifuges, each thrumming with power as they spun corrosive, boiling-hot uranium hexafluoride gas at supersonic speeds to separate the valuable light isotopes of uranium from the slightly heavier ones.

Astrid glanced at the placard. "Hiccup, it says here we're doubling capacity every two years. It's… some buildout." She caught a glimpse of the cost, and blanched. "That's… a lot of moolah."

Hiccup shrugged. "It's cheaper than it looks, actually. Remember, the cost covers fuel for the reactor buildout, industrial and vehicular reactors, and Defense's requirement for half of a million nukes by next year. Joule-for-joule, nuclear energy is dirt cheap. Heck, per unit of firepower, nuclear bombs are dirt cheap. Think about it. A ton of TNT – say a big GP bomb – costs maybe a few hundred dollars. Today, even accounting for the industrial capital costs, a one-megaton bomb comes in at well under a million dollars – so a ton of nuclear firepower costs less than a dollar. The nuke comes in a hundred times cheaper than the TNT, per unit of boom."

He gestured to the section on nuclear mining explosives. "Cheaper kaboom, cheaper to emplace, less air and water pollution. TNT is toxic, you know, and a million tonnes of TNT is terrifying so."

Astrid nodded. "So that's why the higher-ups were talking about phasing out conventional bombs entirely."

"For military applications, a one-kiloton or subkiloton tactical bomb – that's where most of the demand is these days - doesn't cost much less than a one-megaton bomb – maybe a hundred thousand dollars - but it's still pretty cost-competitive – especially when you consider that a Falcon guided missile also costs a few hundred thousand dollars."

Astrid winced, remembering the weapons she had expended over Siberia. You could build a hospital with that kind of money.

Hiccup chuckled. "Hey, the alternative to all this cool stuff is funding a hundred more armored divisions on the border with the Soviets, and pulling maybe four million more people off the economy and putting them in uniform. That would be way more expensive. Nukes are just _that cost-effective, _and the way things are going, they'll only get cheaper_._ But they'll never abandon conventional weapons. Just too much escalation risk."

They departed, nudged past a gaggle of schoolkids in matching uniforms, and entered into a brightly lit room.

Behind a floor-to-ceiling glass curtain, a series of control rods plunged from the ceiling into a deep, circular pool, a honeycomb of rods at its base. Astrid widened her eyes. "…is that…"

The teacher waved her class forward. "Okay, class! This is an operating atomic reactor. Come closer and see. Don't hit the glass, Ralph. Remember. The Atom is our friend, but we must treat atomic radiation with respect. See the long rods? Those are control rods, so they can shut down the reactor whenever they need to – just by dropping them. The glowing rods at the bottom are the fuel rods and moderator. The water in the pit keeps the reactor cool and protects us from the radiation. Now repeat after me, class…"

Astrid watched with amusement as Hiccup pressed himself against the glass, scrutinizing the reactor as a monk might a holy relic. She turned to a mustached teacher. "So, where are you guys from? Qinghai?"

The fresh-faced teacher shook his head. "Close, but no cigar. We're from Tianshui, Gansu. The train ride over is a hassle, but the kids love it. Plus, Atomland subsidizes our trip."

Astrid raised an eyebrow. "You come here often?"

The teacher nodded just as Hiccup suddenly turned back to Astrid. "So… uh… this is a TRIGA teaching reactor – a really tiny one, gives off enough power to maybe run five refrigerators…"

Astrid leaned back nonchalantly.

"…and the best thing about this reactor is that it can be pulsed – you can suddenly increase the power output of a TRIGA, and it will immediately self-correct back to a safe power output. President Zhou demonstrated a reactor much like it to everyone at the World's Fair a couple of years back, if you remember. Basically, the fact is that nuclear reactions can be affected by changes in volume and temperature, mostly because neutron interactions with other nuclei are temperature-dependent. In a TRIGA reactor, the fuel is designed so that the nuclear reactions slow down when the temperature increases. So when you increase the power output of the TRIGA – say, by removing the control rods, the temperature goes up, the nuclear reactions slow down, and the power output and temperature go back down. We can do it in this reactor."

Astrid smiled, and nodded.

"Let me show you."

Hiccup walked over to a small control console. He flicked a switch, and the lights went out, plunging the room into darkness. "Keep your eyes on the reactor – it's still right in front of us."

The room had fallen silent. Astrid stiffened as Hiccup guided her hand to a large button on the console. "Keep your eyes open. And 3… 2… 1…".

Hiccup mashed their joined hands on the button, and the reactor hissed as the control rods were flung from the core.

The reactor sprang to life with a flash of blue light, rapidly dimming to a soft blue glow that emanated from around the rods, bathing the room in blue, silver and black.

Almost like turning on a stove, Astrid thought. But then again, what was a nuclear reactor other than a fancy stove? And what was a stove other than a fancy campfire?

Other than the gargantuan difference in energy density, what was an Atom Bomb other than a fancy Molotov cocktail, releasing all of the energy in a fuel at once?

Astrid glanced at Hiccup's face as he stared, entranced, into the blue Cerenkov glow, as hypnotized by the powers at work as the first caveman must have been by the first campfire.

First fire and flint. Then wood and iron. Then coal and steel. Now, the Atom.

For an instant, Astrid _saw_ what Hiccup did_. _The great chain of interlocking, interdependent technologies that had raised mankind to the heights of technological achievement, that had driven the great wheel of history forward, that had made man indisputable master of the Earth.

The azure glow died down, leaving a dark emptiness in its wake. Hiccup gave Astrid's hand a reassuring squeeze, and Astrid realized that they had been holding hands.

"Come on. Let's go see the next exhibit."

Astrid slowly nodded, and followed Hiccup out of the room.

She almost didn't want to go.

=O=

_Real world:_

_Shipping, fluff, and excessive gushing about THE POWER OF THE ATOM! A little too mush gushing, I know, but THE ATOM IS OUR FRIEND! (This society is a bit atom-happy/atom-crazy). _

_To the best of my knowledge, many applications of nuclear power described above were explored at least on an experimental (test-stand) basis. The nuclear-powered road train, drilling machine, tank, aircraft and helicopter were paper projects only. The Soviet Union conducted tests of nuclear mining explosives. __Readers are free to come to their own conclusions as to the wisdom of massive civilian nuclear proliferation (if you use nukes for oil and gas stimulation, you're going to have to put a few nukes in Saudi Arabia... among various other issues with the idea - groundshock will damage buildings nearby, and radioactivity is always a concern), and feedback is welcome as always. _

_The US nuclear arsenal topped out at 50,000 nuclear warheads in the 70s; the Soviet arsenal hit 70,000 weapons. The US and Russians currently have several thousand deployed warheads each (more than adequate for deterrence and warfighting), and the minor nuclear powers (China, the UK, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel) have perhaps several hundred each – less for North Korea and Israel. _

_With an immense investment of national effort, a decade or three to build the infrastructure, and enough uranium ore (which is not very rare), such obscene production of nuclear material was most certainly possible. Since Blackbird takes place in a distinctly atom-happy/atom-crazy society, this has come to pass. __J_

_And yes, the US Air Force did once consider, very briefly, phasing out non-nuclear weapons entirely because yes, nukes were (and still are) ludicrously cost-effective. And yes, funding Strategic Air Command was definitely cheaper than funding a hundred more divisions to oppose the Soviets in Europe. The Soviet Union was ridiculously militarized, spending between a quarter and half of its GDP on the military (they were Communists, so their pricing systems were all screwed up) and fielding over 200 divisions at different times in the Cold War. _

_On the other hand, the Soviets had fifty thousand tanks, and maybe a hundred thousand armored vehicles in total. If you're thinking of blowing them up individually with nuclear rocket launchers, you're going to need comparable numbers of man-portable nuclear rockets. _


	18. Atmospheric Testing

Thanks to CajunBear73 for his reviews and commentary.

=O=

Chapter 18: Atmospheric Testing

Astrid sighed as she admired the landscape before her.

The huge drive-in restaurant had been built atop a low ridge – the highest point in the entire area. Before it stretched a massive salt flat – a perfectly flat light brown plain that went all the way to the horizon, where it ran into a magnificent band of pale orange sky studded with gold-stained clouds, a band which quickly gave way to the light blue late afternoon sky.

The magnificent desolation of the Lop Nur wasteland was marred only by one structure. On the horizon, a large, helium-filled balloon hovered three hundred meters above the desert floor, held in place by dozens of slim steel wires – wisps of razor-thin thread spreading from an inverted white teardrop, just barely visible against an orange sky.

As much as he tried, Hiccup couldn't quite make out the cylindrical gondola dangling beneath the white balloon. He began to squirm in the driver's seat of their rented convertible. "I'm sorry I made a scene at the Fat Man exhibit." He blurted out.

Astrid waved it off. "You're still thinking about that? It was barely a loud conversation, Hiccup."

Hiccup shrunk into the leather chair. "I just… don't particularly like disagreeing with you so… much… on something."

Astrid raised an eyebrow. "Disagreements among friends are _normal_, Hiccup."

Hiccup shrugged.

=O=

The Hall of War was popular with visitors – much more so than the half-empty Hall of Energy had been.

On display were all manner of nuclear artillery shells, missiles, and freefall bombs, their surfaces carefully sanitized of features that might be of interest to a Soviet spy. A man-sized nuclear rocket launcher with a tiny football-sized warhead – barely portable by a team of two men or by a jeep - seemed the centerpiece of the gallery.

They made their way over to the Fat Man/World War II exhibit, where a series of maps, paragraphs, and photographs told the story of Operation Pumpkin, the massed nuclear strikes against Japanese industrial, military and population targets that had ended World War II.

Astrid could almost recite the details. Even cut off from the shreds of her ill-gotten Empire by an airtight blockade, with her fleet neutered, her people starving, and her vast industries under relentless air attack, the powerful industrial nation of Japan resisted to the end. Despite truly heroic attempts at defense suppression, every B-47, B-52 and B-60 sortie against Japanese targets was met with missiles, interceptors and even kamikaze rocket planes, churned out in their hundreds from subterranean factories. Navy carriers providing fighter cover were pummeled by swarms of sea-skimming missiles and kamikaze aircraft. Bombers and ships had gone down in scores.

It had still not been enough to stop the Pacifican onslaught. Better tactics were developed to deal with the Japanese weapons, and the Air Force and Navy pushed through, accepting the bearable-but-still-appalling loss rates and hideous expense of the new tactics (which required that four-fifths of aircraft be used to suppress defenses and protect strike aircraft) as facts of life.

Operation Pumpkin had been one such herculean effort. Following a weeklong defense suppression effort involving thousands of fighters and hundreds of light bombers flying tens of thousands of sorties, a dozen heavily escorted B-52s, the first Atomic Bombs nestled safely in their bellies, unleashed their payloads against targets in Kyoto, Yokohama, Tokyo, Kokura, Fukoka, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, Sasebo, Niigata, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Factories, military headquarters, critical rail and road junctions, underground bases, and naval support facilities were destroyed with varying degrees of effectiveness, along with large urban areas. Rail yards, in particular, proved tough as heck, and the puny twenty-kiloton weapons, inaccurately dropped, failed to put them completely out of action. Hiroshima's tram system, for instance, was back up and running within two days*.

Five days later, the twelve cities were joined by a dozen more in Korea and Japan (one bomb embarrassingly "fizzling" over a port in Shikoku with a yield of barely two kilotons).

In the immortal understatement of the Japanese Emperor, 'the war situation had developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage'.

Japan surrendered two days later, saving millions of Japanese from slow, painful deaths by starvation from the years-long blockade and systematic destruction of food transportation networks that was in the works. The atomic bombings probably hadn't saved many Pacifican lives, though. The Army wouldn't have had the balls to invade anyway, especially with the Navy and Air Force backing away from the invasion plan as fast as possible after the bloodbath of Okinawa.

But if the Army had found the guts to invade… estimates of Pacifican military deaths went into the millions.

Astrid turned to Hiccup, who was reading through the display with an annoyed expression on his face. Hiccup shook his head. "We should have dropped them earlier."

Astrid did a double take. "You actually believe the idiot historians who keep saying that?"

Hiccup snorted. "We were making a bomb a week by March. But no, they had to wait until we were building a bomb a day."

Between the first Pacifican atomic test in early 1945 and the end of the war in September, the Joint Government lost a million men and women on the blood-soaked battlefields of Europe and Asia.

A million men died even as the scientists and engineers of the Manhattan Project district fiddled with the Atom Bomb, "improving" it, making it more economical, more destructive, more deliverable.

A million men died even as scientists misused their nigh-unlimited wartime resources, wasting precious "improved" bombs in needless nuclear tests and spending vast sums developing nuclear reactors and "the next generation" of hydrogen super-bombs.

A million men died even as military bureaucrats dallied, "productionizing" atom bombs, building up a "reserve stockpile", and gathering "critical intelligence" on whether the Germans or Japanese had atom bombs with which to retaliate.

And throughout that same period, half a million people – civilians, military, subject locals, Pacificans, Japanese - died every month in the Asia-Pacific region*.

Astrid rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on. That's sentimentalist claptrap. The Japanese air defense system was a frickkin' meatgrinder. If we were going to expend the suppression effort to fly nuclear bombers through, we'd have been _idiots_ to send them in one at a time. And how long before the Japanese would have developed countermeasures?" Astrid put her hands on her hips. "Hitting them hard and fast was the way to go."

Hiccup theatrically picked at his chin. "Ten thousand dead aircrews or a million dead people? Just wait. I'm good at math. I can calculate this one…"

Astrid cocked her head. "We had no idea that the Japanese would surrender as quickly as they did. They fought to the last child on Okinawa. Why would they surrender after we blew up a few cities with really big bombs? The objectives of Operation Pumpkin were _military_, not _political_."

Hiccup inhaled sharply. "Are you serious? They spent weeks analyzing the political implications! They knew atomic weapons would be _political _right from the start!" He threw his hands up. "They knew A-bombs were qualitatively new weapons. They knew they were much, much more powerful than chemicals. And they decided to think _militarily_? The whole thing stinks of excessive secrecy and poor decision-making."

Astrid's mouth was agape. "What history books have you been reading? The consensus among the Japanese military officers at the post-attack meeting was to keep fighting. The national mood would have permitted it. Heck, survivors of Hiroshima wanted to fight on, even after the surrender proclamation.* Elements of the Imperial Japanese Army launched a coup against the Emperor when they caught wind of the plan to surrender – a coup that was very nearly successful!* The only reason Japan surrendered was that, by sheer luck, the Emperor panicked when we dropped the A-bombs, rushed to surrender, and didn't get dethroned in the process!"

=O=

Hiccup sighed, and turned back towards the sunset. "Yeah, I guess. I see your point, and I guess you see mine." He chuckled. "I still think dropping 'em early would have saved lives."

Astrid sighed, uneager to resume the debate. "You know… my dad got shot down for the third time in '45. He lost both arms. Damned ejection seat. So every time the topic comes up, I keep thinking: If they'd dropped the bombs early, my father might have kept his arms. I should be the first person rooting for an early drop. But even I don't root for an early drop, because I know it would have been a mess. What the heck's wrong with everyone else?"

Hiccup looked thoughtful. "I pretty much spent the entire war at my boarding school in Hangzhou. Dad was off flying Thunderjets over the front, and mom was off... doing her own thing. I had it easy. Three square meals a day, and all that. You?"

Astrid frowned. "My mom worked the night shift in a factory in Wuhan."

Hiccup winced. "Wuhan? Did you…"

Astrid shook her head, and paused before resuming her tale. "I… was the eldest, so I had to take care of my siblings. Two brothers and a sister." She shuddered as she contemplated being separated from her family for four years. "Was… it lonely for you?"

Hiccup shrugged. "Huh. It… didn't feel lonely back then, I guess. It's not like I had much to compare the experience with. Plus, I was always grateful for the cafeteria. I hated ration queues so, so much."

While ration cards in theory ensured that everyone had enough food to live on, in practice, the Japanese invasion had badly disrupted supply chains for most foodstuffs. Incessant shortages for rationed and non-rationed items had been the norm. One day, the market might have no rice at all. The next, a rice train might finally have made it past military traffic jams, and the market might have nothing but rice … so everybody would show up at the market at the same time, and stand in lines for hours for barely adequate rations of rice.

Astrid chuckled. "Queues weren't that bad. You could get to know people, share gossip, talk to your sister… oh, who am I kidding. They sucked."

Hiccup's stomach growled at the mention of food. "Thank god for the economy."

Astrid nodded fervently.

The carhop arrived with their trays, and they dug into their noodles.

Astrid swallowed a dumpling, and put down her chopsticks. "I… forgot to tell you. I managed to catch some scuttlebutt from the squadron commander. We got put in for a commendation for our overflight."

Hiccup slurped from his spoon. "Did we find something interesting?"

Astrid shrugged. "We _were _the first people in-theater to get shot at by an SA-5. Funny how we'll never know what Toothless's radar saw, even if we were the ones in the cockpit." She licked her lips, and looked around the drive-in restaurant, packed with noodle-slurping motorists seated in their cars, all facing the salt flats. "This place is great. How did you get a reservation for the show?"

Hiccup scratched the back of his neck. "I… got lucky. They ran out of reservations the first time I checked, but then the border with India started heating up, and the Administration ordered an extra series of stockpile verification tests – you know, just in case we really do need to use the stockpile. So I got a seat."

The nuclear tests also served to remind the Indians that the Pacific _had _a stockpile, and _was_ willing to use it.

Astrid chuckled. "So we have two things to thank the Indians for. Our commendation, and this meal." She raised her glass of milk tea – an iced mixture of strong red tea, evaporated milk and sugar. "To Red India."

Hiccup raised his glass. "To Red India."

The carhop cleared their trays, leaving Astrid and Hiccup alone with the sunset.

Below the bronze-and-purple cloud layers, the salt flats lay bare, bathed in a soft golden glow by the yolk-orange sun. As Astrid craned her head to the great vault of the heavens, she could just make out the first stars amongst the light indigo sky.

Hiccup pulled a sketchbook out of his bag, and began to sketch the sunset before them.

Astrid raised an eyebrow. "You sketch?"

Hiccup shrugged. "It's not like I can always have my camera on me."

Astrid gave him a nudge. "Mind if I have a look?"

Hiccup wavered. "I… uhhh… would prefer it if…"

Astrid rolled her eyes. "What? Did you draw me in here or something?"

Hiccup said nothing.

Astrid held out her hand. Hiccup duly closed the sketchbook, and handed it over.

Astrid turned the pages. Sketches of skyscapes, the view from 80,000 feet. Annotated sketches of their F-12, of the avionics, the control panels, detailing what worked and what didn't. Technical, clear, and precise. And classified to boot.

She stopped.

It was Big Pete and his ground crew, working on Toothless. She turned the page. Snotlout and the pilots, at the Officer's Club. Ruffnut and her backseater, laughing in their flight suits.

A sketch of herself, clambering out of Toothless in her pressure suit.

Another sketch of herself, walking down the flight line.

Astrid examined her sketches. She looked strong, confident, ready for anything.

She _always _looked confident in Hiccup's sketches, even when she distinctly recalled being otherwise.

A loudspeaker blared to life, interrupting her reverie. "Attention ladies and gentlemen. Initiation will occur in five minutes. Please ensure that all children are inside the child safety bunker, and that all members of your family have donned the flash goggles provided. Use of alternative eye protection is strictly prohibited."

Astrid closed the sketchbook, and handed it back to Hiccup. "They're beautiful, Hiccup."

Hiccup scratched the back of his head. "Uhh… thanks. You know, you'd be surprised how much a good illustration helps an engineering paper."

The loudspeaker blared again. "Today's third shot is "Jackpot Teal". Shot Jackpot Teal is a stockpile verification test of a small tactical atomic warhead, part of the Operation Jackpot test series ordered by the Bureau of Defense. The anticipated yield is ten kilotons. Stockpile verification tests like this one allow us to detect and correct problems that may arise from long-term storage of nuclear weapons, and maintain our confidence in our nuclear arsenal, upon which the security of this nation is critically dependent. Also, up yours, India! That land is ours! Ours!"

A wild cheer went up amongst the spectators, and Hiccup gently shook his head. Some people forgot the horrors of war far too readily.

Astrid hurriedly donned her heavily tinted flash goggles. The desert disappeared in an ocean of black, leaving only a pale, faded sun against a backdrop of dark grey sky.

Astrid smiled. "Remember that sunset we saw a couple weeks back? The one in the mountains?"

Hiccup blushed. "Yeah. That one was great."

Astrid nodded. "I'm almost happy that I fell into that stream. If we'd gotten to the end of the course on time, we'd have missed it."

"T-minus twenty seconds. Nineteen… Eighteen… Seventeen…"

"If your vision is not protected, turn away immediately."

Hiccup gave her hand a squeeze.

"Three… Two… One…"

Seven kilometers away, a great flashbulb went off over the salt flats. For a second, everything – the cars, the bunkers, the entire valley – glowed with the light of a dozen suns. A pulse of heat stung Astrid's skin.

The nuclear flash disappeared as quickly as it had come, and a second sun rose over Lop Nur. The nuclear fireball rapidly expanded, throwing out a pair of huge, glittering condensation rings as it faded. Initiated in the gondola of a balloon, high above the desert floor, the fireball died out before hitting the ground.

The fireball – now a roiling, dimly glowing cloud of superheated air - rose rapidly into the sky, sucking air, condensed water droplets, and dust from the salt flats scoured from the earth by the nuclear flash into a massive pillar of dust and smoke. A stalk, rising under a bulbous cap.

A mushroom cloud.

As if hitting an invisible ceiling, the cloud topped out at about six kilometers, and began to spill out along the boundary layer.

Scattered cheers rang out from the seated guests, and someone began to clap. All premature.

Astrid plugged her ears. Around her, Hiccup and the more seasoned spectators did the same.

A great crack rang out across the salt flats, blowing hats off onlookers and mussing hairdos, followed by a slow rumble as the energy of the explosion worked its way out of Lop Nur.

Astrid unplugged her ears, doffed her flash goggles, and began clapping even as cheers and whistles filled the air. Hiccup gave a whoop, and turned to give Astrid a celebratory hug, which Astrid returned.

"That was incredible! Did you feel that flash! We were seven kilometers away, and it still felt hot enough to burn!" Hiccup struggled to contain his excitement even as he continued to admire the mushroom cloud that continued to hang over the salt flats.

Astrid nodded. "Spectacular. I've seen a lot of explosions in my life, but that nuke still takes the cake. Nowhere near as scary as a SAM detonating fifty meters off your wingtip, though. Totally, totally worth it."

Closer to the detonation, the flash of heat would have lit everything on fire and burned skin down the bone, while the blast waves would have blown in windows (killing people with shards of flying glass) and knocked over buildings. Even closer in, instead of heating air, the glut of highly penetrating neutron radiation from the blast would have zipped right through steel (e.g. tank armor) to _thoroughly_ warm the soft, chewy, water-filled humans from organs to skin – tearing up cells and genetic material and causing agonizing deaths from radiation poisoning in the process.

"Attention all spectators. The shot is complete, and the range is now closing. Please depart the viewing areas in your vehicles, or board the awaiting buses. Please remember to use the complimentary car wash at Atomland Central before the end of your journey."

Hiccup pouted. "Awww… the cloud's still there! And the balloon was waaay up from the desert floor. We can stay here all day. There's not gonna be any appreciable fallout."

Atomland had spent tens of thousands of dollars putting up a shot balloon (beneath which the bomb could be initiated) in order to ensure that the fireball would not reach the ground. This sharply limited the amount of dust that would get sucked into the nuclear fireball, turned radioactive by the nuclear bomb, lofted into the sky, and slowly fall out across the surrounding terrain as… well, radioactive fallout. Nonetheless, it was still Atomland policy to get spectators out of the fallout zone as quickly as possible, and give the cars a good scrub to wash off fallout – for peace of mind if nothing else.

The cloud continued to dissipate as the sun sank below the horizon.

"Uh… Hiccup. I don't know whether I'm repeating myself, but... thanks for bringing me here. It was a lot of fun." Astrid said.

Hiccup shrugged. "You're welcome."

=O=


	19. Super-Ready Status

Thanks to CajunBear73 and Skrillwriter for their reviews and commentary.

=O=

Chapter 19: Super-Ready Status

Chongqing Underground Complex

Sichuan Province, Joint Government of the Pacific

General Drago Bludvist's footsteps echoed off the steel walls of the cavernous command center. While the deeply buried bunker would not withstand a direct hit from a large nuclear weapon, it, and the steel buildings mounted on giant springs within, would survive a half-mile miss, and the complex was completely fallout-proof to boot.

Technically speaking, this was not General Bludvist's command center. His place was on his EC-135 command plane, or even on his personal B-70 bomber. This was an Air Defense Command installation, and General Bludvist was only present as an observer for the joint ADC-SAC exercises.

He had taken over the complex regardless.

The screen lit up.

"It begins."

=O=

The Hardened Aircraft Shelter was pretty cozy, as far as things went. The four-meter-thick concrete walls of the plane bunker trapped virtually all the heat emanating from the men, machines, and heaters within.

Putting down her dog-eared book, Astrid glanced across the folding table to Hiccup, who looked absolutely ridiculous as he tried to do paperwork in his bulky pressure suit.

At least the gloves came off.

Astrid walked over to her duffel for a newspaper, passing Big Pete and his crew, who were having a nice game of cards. Astrid was almost sorry that they hadn't broken out the mahjong for this shift. That, at least, would have been a game she would want to play. Hiccup would have to break out the earmuffs, but that was really a small price to pay.

Toothless just sat there, fuelled up, bombed up, and ready to go, attended to by one lonely technician, who flipped listlessly through a white-covered magazine even as he kept an eye on the dials of the start-cart.

Astrid flipped open her newspaper.

INDIA NOT AFRAID OF NUCLEAR WAR, PRIME MINISTER SAYS

Astrid rolled her eyes as the Indian Prime Minister insisted that, no, India was not afraid of nuclear war with the Joint Government, that there were 500 million Indians and the Pacific could not possibly kill them all, and that if they tried, the Soviets would kill a billion Pacificans, against which the Pacific could not possibly retaliate by killing a billion Soviets, because there were only 200 million Soviets. He finished his diatribe by rehashing his conviction that nuclear weapons were a paper tiger, and that the ability of the Joint Government to blow up rocks in the middle of a desert did not scare India one whit.

Astrid groaned at the self-contradictory tirade. Thanks to that bastard, all leave for the Mid-Autumn Festival had been cancelled. While it hadn't really affected herself or Hiccup – they'd blown their leave on that trip to Atomland – the rest of the squadron had felt the pinch.

The entire squadron had been put on high alert, which meant days of camping out next to their aircraft in the dreary, stuffy boredom of the Hardened Aircraft Shelter.

At the same time, workloads had gone through the roof, as the squadron had scrambled to plan for the snap conventional (i.e. non-nuclear) warfighting exercises. Exercise JUMPKICK had kicked off the day before, and if Ruffnut's complaining was any indication, it was putting a helluva lot of Phantom Phlyers through their paces.

Astrid spread the paper over her face, donned a pair of earmuffs, and closed her eyes. She needed sleep more than news. Sleep...

"BBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"

Astrid jolted awake and made a mad dash for the cockpit, joining the frenzy of action that had engulfed the shelter even as the alarm continued to blare its banal tone. Pete waved his arms like a madman as his crew pulled out diagnostic cables, sealed hatches, and removed chocks. Astrid scrambled into her seat as Pete backed the big truck full of computer diagnostic equipment away from Toothless. Hiccup was already running the preflight.

The concrete door opened to the roar of a turbojet. In the distance, a Blackbird roared off the runway in a cloud of black smoke, followed six seconds later by another identical aircraft.

They were being scrambled. At this very moment, Soviet ballistic missiles could be arcing across the sky towards Berk at fifteen times the speed of sound.

One minute had passed since the alert.

Soviet missiles could reach Berk in six.

Toothless's engines flared to life, and Astrid closed her canopy as Toothless rolled out onto the hardened concrete taxiway.

"Plasma 9, Plasma 9, you are cleared for takeoff from runway two, over."

"Plasma 9 copies, Tower. Runway two, out." Hiccup hoped it was just another exercise, but kept his speculation to himself. No, far better to treat this as the real thing.

Astrid scanned the scrambling airbase as Toothless rolled towards the runway, joining a steady stream of aircraft ambling from their shelters.

Since the escalation of the crisis, Berk had been overstuffed with aircraft of every stripe, and its aprons overflowed with airpower. Scores of jungle-green Tactical Air Command aircraft – turboprop cargo planes, lumbering heavy bombers, sleek multirole fighters, and swing-wing fighter-bombers stood idle, their air operations interrupted to make way for the top-priority scramble of strategic forces. A vast army of technicians, bomb haulers, and other service vehicles wound their way between acres of tentage, supply dumps surrounded by earthworks, and revetted aircraft – the massive volumes of conventional bombs prepared having exceeded the capacity of Berk's remaining serviceable WWII-era storage facilities.

A brand new EC-137 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft - a windowless silver airliner with a saucer shaped radar on top - roared off the runway, easing into the afternoon sky, followed by a stream of airborne refuelling tankers, taking off scarcely twelve seconds apart. More Blackbirds shot down the runway.

B-58B Hustler supersonic bombers, sleek chrome-grey aircraft with enormous belly fuel pods and four podded turbojets dangling off a swept delta wing, roared off runway one. The bombers were headed for their fail-safe points, an hour from targets deep within the Soviet Union.

Three minutes.

The Blackbird ahead lit its engines, and roared off into the afternoon sky in a choking cloud. The runway stretched out before her.

They shot down the runway and climbed into the sky.

Astrid pushed the throttle to the max, an eye always on the speed and altitude gauges. They needed to get out of dodge, and do it fast.

In the event of a nuclear war, Soviet missileers were expected not only to hit the base's runways and shelters, but also to carpet the airspace around Berk in nuclear airbursts, to kill bombers trying to gain altitude. That was what the Air Force planned to do to Soviet airbases, at any rate.

Five minutes.

They cleared the danger zone.

Still no boom.

"Plasma 9, this is Longhouse. We have multiple bogeys inbound. You have been assigned bogeys Bravo-17, 18, and 19 at Bullseye 187 at 121, 400 knots, 30,000 feet. Proceed to intercept and positively identify. Weapons safe, over."

"Plasma 9 copies, out."

Astrid gunned the engines, and they shot off towards the intercept.

=O=

"I have them on radar and infrared." Hiccup worked his fire control system furiously.

"I'll make a close pass over them at 70,000 feet." Astrid said.

"Electro-optical system on." Hiccup flipped a switch, and watched as a monitor flickered to life, displaying the image from a telescopic TV camera in one of Toothless's chimes.

They overflew a bogey, and a fuzzy picture appeared on Hiccup's monitor. A conventional-looking aircraft – a tube with wings and four engine pods - appeared on-screen, JGAF markings gleaming in the sunlight.

Hiccup exhaled. "It's a B-52. One of ours."

They went into a turn, overflying the remaining bogeys one by one. All B-52s.

"Longhouse, please be advised, Bravo 17, 18, and 19 have been identified as B-52 bombers. Friendlies, over."

Longhouse came in over the radio. "Message received, Plasma 9. Proceed to hold point."

Astrid sighed. "Just another drill."

Hiccup smiled. "Hey, we got out in time, made the intercept in time, and got everything done in one pass."

They were en route to the hold point when another voice came in over the radio. "Exercise, exercise, exercise. Attention Plasma flight, this is Longhouse. We have additional bogies; Charlies -3 through 15. Speed 1,800 knots, 60,000 feet. Headings… all over the place."

Longhouse began spelling out in great detail exactly what radars across the country were seeing – details that the bombers, with their much smaller radars and looser command and control, could not see.

Astrid whistled. It wasn't every day that they got to tangle with supersonic bombers.

Hiccup chuckled. "Has to be Valkyries or Blackbirds. Nothing else is that fast."

Astrid rolled her eyes. "Exercise, Hiccup."

Hiccup whipped out his slide rule. "We're going to need some help for this one."

The Colonel came in over the radio. "Copy, Longhouse. Plasma flight, you heard the man. Form up!"

Across the vast expanse of Outer Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and Xinjiang, the ten Blackbirds and dozen B-70 Valkyrie bombers gracefully set up their positions, players in the world's largest game of football. Far below the stratospheric players, two dozen or so F-106s milled about, eager to take potshots at the Valkyries if they ever were so foolish to fly directly overhead, and dealing with the slowpoke B-52s that continued to percolate through the exercise airspace.

The B-70s hit the first line of F-106s, accelerating or making majestic high-mach turns around the interceptors. A few F-106 interceptors tried snap-up shots, but none got close enough for a "kill".

"Plasma 9, you're on point. You have been assigned bogey Charlie-8. Go active."

Astrid gunned it, and Toothless charged towards Charlie-8. Hiccup turned on the Hughes radar, and let loose a mighty shriek of microwaves. As the shriek echoed all the way across Outer Mongolia (and into the ears of eager Soviet signals intelligence analysts across the border), bomber aircrews huddled in anticipation as their supersonic mounts chirped with fear.

Charlie-8 veered gently off course as it tried to evade Toothless. Two hundred kilometers away, another bomber tried to give Toothless a wide, country-sized berth. In doing so, it bunched itself up with a third bomber.

"Good, good, good, Plasma 9. Plasma 10, you're a go!"

Snotlout's backseater cut loose his radar, and across the breadth of Mongolia, bombers veered left and right in stately turns, breaking up the evenly-spaced formation.

As she closed with the bombers, Astrid took Toothless into a sharp, countrysized turn, forcing one more bomber to take evasive action.

Hiccup chuckled as Longhouse continued to update the situation map. The Valkyries were being corralled, and they barely knew it. He turned off his radar.

They'd intentionally veered away from Charlie-8, and it was still trying to get away. But even though the Valkyrie could turn as tightly as Toothless, Longhouse – and the AWACS feeding it information - allowed Hiccup to track the bomber's every move. They closed in on the hapless bomber, which was practically blind to the interceptor stalking it… as long as they kept their radars off.

Behind them, the rest of the squadron boxed conveniently bunched-up bombers between pairs of Blackbirds, or sent lone Blackbirds chasing after escapees.

Toothless's radar roared as they closed to missile range, and the telescopic camera, tracking the bomber, clicked at closest approach. In the blurry picture on his cathode-ray-tube display, Hiccup imagined he could just make out the silver-grey paint job, delta wing, and drooping wingtips of a B-70.

It was an unusual-looking aircraft – with a body plan that never failed to remind Hiccup of a giant goose. To its rear, six massive J93 turbojets and a bomb bay were buried in a wedge-shaped block, flanked by large delta-wings with drooping tips. From this block, a goose-necked fuselage protruded forward, ending in a sleek nose decorated with cockpit windows and a pair of canards.

The tiny picture belied the sheer size of the aircraft. The Valkyrie measured nearly sixty meters from nose to tail – just ten meters shorter than a Jumbo Jet. Despite its size, the B-70 could fly directly from Quebec to Moscow _and back_ at Mach 3, making the 12,000-km round-trip in just over three hours. Its cavernous bomb bay could hold up to sixteen one-megaton thermonuclear bombs, sixteen standoff nuclear attack rockets, or twenty tonnes of conventional bombs – a much more substantial bombload than Toothless's puny four tonnes.

Toothless had scored a solid "kill" nonetheless.

"We got him, Astrid! We got the picture!"

Astrid whooped with joy.

All twelve bombers down. Two secondary targets "hit" by bombers. Victory.

They were taking on gas from the tanker when the new orders came in. "Plasma flight, be advised, you are now part of Exercise JUMPKICK. Return to base immediately for weapons re-arm and briefing."

Astrid raised an eyebrow. "Conventional warfare training?"

=O=

Astrid fumed as Toothless roared across the star-studded, pitch-black sky. Far below them, thin wisps of cloud glowed gently in the light of the full moon.

Everything had gone wrong. Damned conventional warfare exercises.

They had been late taking off, the strike package had been even later, and then they had spent most of an hour orbiting their own airbase. The special tanker with their JP-7 had been delayed, and half the Blackbirds had been forced off the mission for lack of fuel. Then, they'd raced ahead to provide a rotating combat air patrol over Red force bases while the slowpoke strike package made their ingress, coordinating with the defense suppression section to stimulate Red force radars. And just when everything finally seemed to be going well, the tanker was late _again_, and they couldn't tell the strike package about it because the frequencies were a mess…

She closed her eyes, and groaned.

"Still mad about the exercise?" Hiccup said.

Astrid sighed. "Yeah. We should have done better. We could have done better."

She gulped. "I should have done better."

"Why would you say that?" Hiccup asked.

Astrid chewed her lip. "Because… because I've flown top cover before. And MiGCAP. I flew the mission back in Siberia, with a crappier airplane and even worse support, and while screwups happened, we mostly pulled it off. I… know this! I used to be good at this! This shouldn't be this hard."

Hiccup shook his head. "Astrid, this is a new airplane. We're escorting new-ish birds, running the show through new command and control systems… this is practically a new environment. And it's not like we practiced this a lot – I mean, most of our training was nuclear. So… you're rusty. Everyone in the squadron's been flying nothing but intercepts. We're all rusty."

He sighed. "There's nothing to it but to hit the books and simulators, get practice, and learn. This is an _exercise_, Astrid. It's not about winning or losing. It's about learning _lessons_. Put down your ego for a moment, and _think._"

Astrid inhaled sharply. "I know, I know." She paused. "Thanks for reminding me. I needed that."

"Just doing my job." Hiccup chuckled. "Although you _could_ bring us up to 80,000 feet and black out the cockpit. It is the Mid-Autumn Festival, after all, and moonwatching is traditional."

Astrid smiled, and took them higher and higher.

The cockpit lights went out, and the celestial vault came into view once again.

Toothless went into a gentle turn, as if to show off to the unblinking stars just how far man had come.

Together, far above the clouds, the three of them basked in the glory of the night sky.

Astrid sighed. "The stars aren't as nice tonight. The Moon's beautiful, though. I can see the maria easy."

Astrid traced the outline of Oceanus Procellarum. Billions of years ago, when the Earth had been young, the grey-black blotch had been a vast ocean of lunar lava. Lava tubes and rilles from that bygone era still graced the lunar mare, frozen for eons in flows of basalt.

Hairless apes infested those lava tubes now, wasting billions building pointless lunar colonies within the cozy, radiation-proof lava tubes even as the needs of the national defense went unmet.

"You know, I just realized that the stars don't twinkle up here. Not as much atmosphere between us and them." Hiccup gulped silently, and clawed at the memory of shared sunsets as he worked up the nerve to blurt the name of the _proper _restaurant he had managed to get dinner reservations for this time.

Astrid nodded. "Huh."

Hiccup took a deep breath, and focused on the starscape. "So. I…"

The starscape burst into a riot of color.

Shimmering curtains of green, red, and violet descended from the heavens, fluttering in and out of existence as they meandered across the night sky.

Hiccup and Astrid stared at the sky, utterly entranced. All thoughts of conversation fell by the wayside as the magnificent display unfolded before them.

The sky sang with light from horizon to horizon.

Astrid extended her gloved palm to the window, as if she could feel the caress of the aurorae through the quartz glass.

Hiccup, his breath taken away, just stared at the ever-shifting colors, which seemed to hold the promise of infinite knowledge beyond a softly glowing veil.

"It's… just… wow." Astrid sighed happily. _Another magical moment. And we're sharing it together._

Hiccup bit his lip as he finally tore his gaze away from the window, and began hastily running through Toothless's systems. "This is not good. This is not good."

"What? Why?" Astrid turned to her instruments, and began checks in lock-step with Hiccup's.

"This isn't exactly the Arctic Circle." He sighed. "I can think of exactly three reasons for an aurora all the way down here. A really bad solar storm, a serious problem with the Van Allen Belt drainage program or..."

Astrid gulped. "…someone popped a nuke in low orbit."

=O=

_Surprise! _


	20. Spectacular Show of Force

Thanks to CajunBear73 and Skrillwriter for their reviews and input.

=O=

Chapter 20: Spectacular Show of Force

With most of the exercise staff gone, the ADC command center was back to its usual, quiet self.

General Drago Bludvist gazed upon the vast map of the world on the far wall, with its blinking lights, wavy lines, and theater borders, a scowl on his face.

The exercise had not quite gone according to plan. Stoick Haddock had stolen precious exercise time from him, and his supersonic bombers had fared surprisingly poorly against ADC's Blackbirds.

Drago shook his head. Now was no time to dwell on petty failures. He had achieved most of his training goals. Precious data had been collected with which tactics against air defense systems equipped with supersonic interceptors could be devised. Clearly, procedures and tactics regarding evasive routing and threat evasion needed a substantial overhaul. Further afield, assigning Blackbird fighters to attack targets and escort his bombers would greatly increase attack effectiveness. and the new AWACS battle management aircraft, if used offensively, could potentially give his bombers as good a picture of enemy dispositions as the defender (that, however, required the slowpoke AWACS bird to be in place before the supersonic bombers came screaming in – doable over the Mainland, but harder over the North Pole unless as part of a well-coordinated first strike).

Drago smiled a little smile. Given time, Stoick would get his comeuppance. Getting rid of the man would not be difficult.

But getting his hands on those aircraft was another matter. Getting his allies in Portland to make sure that the Blackbirds had been built as _multirole_ fighters instead of interceptors had been a stroke of genius – giving him plenty of hooks with which to pull ADC apart. For without interceptors, what point was there to an Aerospace Defense Command? All it did was fly multirole fighter planes that were exactly the same as all other fighter planes. But just _how_ could he transfer ADC's idle, overpriced fleet of Blackbirds and AWACS aircraft to Strategic Air Command?

Drago rubbed his chin in thought as he scanned the command center.

Suddenly, an alarm began to ring, and a flashing light appeared on the big screen. Drago stood.

"We have a missile launch! Eastern hemisphere… east India!"

His jaw dropped.

"How many?"

"One plume! It's on DSP 3 only. DSP 4… it's on DSP 4 too now."

With their big infrared telescopes, the Defense Support Program Satellites could spot a hot rocket motor anywhere on the planet, allowing them to detect and localize missile launches with reasonable accuracy.

"Get my bombers in the air!" Drago bellowed.

The ADC commander ignored him. "Alert Portland and SAC. Alert the radars." He took a deep breath. "PAR-2 should be seeing them over the horizon any minute."

PAR-2 was one of the new Bell Labs missile defence radars, designed as a part of the Sentinel ballistic missile defence system currently under development. The Administration had seen fit to expedite funding for PAR-2, and it was now fully operational even as the rest of the system continued its long slog through development and testing. From its hardened tombstone-like concrete housing deep in Qinghai Province, the huge, ten-storey-tall phased array radar could spot, discriminate and track a thousand baseball-sized objects over Sri Lanka, three thousand kilometres away – as long as those targets were above the horizon, that is to say, in outer space a thousand or more kilometers above the ground.

"They're not on PAR-2 yet. They should be on PAR-2 by now." The technician swallowed. "Maybe it's a false alarm."

Drago tensed. He knew the enemy would never start a nuclear war with a single missile – what would be the point? – but one could never be sure.

"Not a peep from the other sats. No other launches so far."

The seconds ticked by. One of Drago's staffers whispered in his ear. "Sir, SAC is going airborne. We can stay in touch with Looking Glass from here." Drago gave a stiff nod.

His bombers might be going to war, and he was stuck in this cave instead of leading the charge.

"Portland wants confirmation!"

"It's on PAR-2!"

"Shit! We have confirmation!"

"Tracking… tracked! Launch point is Assam, India. Computed impact point is… Middle of nowhere. Southern Indian Ocean. A thousand kilometers south of the Cocos Islands."

The entire room seemed to sigh with relief. "It's just a test."

Drago furrowed his brow. "India… doesn't have ballistic missiles."

The commander shrugged. "They do now."

The warhead separated from the booster over East Pakistan, and reached apogee a thousand miles over the equator. The room's interest in the missile seemed to fall as the missile did, right into the middle of the most isolated stretch of ocean on the planet.

"Sir! Navy wants a position fix on point of impact for the booster and warhead!"

The damned glory-hounds in the Navy were already looking forward to dredging chunks of Indian missile from the seafloor.

The missile fell off the scope. "And… that's the last we'll see of it."

Drago smiled. "Well, until the Navy parades the pieces in front of Congress come budget time." They shared a laugh.

The alarm rang again. "What now! Another launch?"

"Nuclear detonation! A big one, high altitude! Bangometer is off the charts!"

In addition to picking up missile launches, satellite-mounted infrared cameras (and also neutron and gamma ray detectors) were also great for picking up nuclear explosions.

"Detonation point… southern Indian Ocean. Two megatons." The technician gulped.

"Detonation altitude?" Drago's mind raced through the possibilities.

"Between eight and twelve hundred kilometers, sir!"

"Get me an effects analyst! What kind of damage are we looking at here? Someone call Perth and tell 'em to shut down their power lines, just in case!" The ADC commander clutched his head. "Get Space Traffic Control and SAC HEO. God, I hope we didn't have any space stations in the prompt effects zone." A staffer ran down the hall.

The ADC commander groaned. Nuclear detonations in orbit injected high-energy charged particles into the earth's radiation belts, damaging satellites, spacecraft, and astronauts alike. Even if the Van Allen high voltage orbital tethers worked as advertised, and drained the belts quickly, spacewalks would still have to be curtailed for over a week. And astronauts would probably have to spend the coming hours in radiation shelters…

"Sir, STC reports that a Storm Warning is out. HEO nuclear command post is bunkering down as we speak."

Drago gritted his teeth as pandemonium engulfed the room. "Looks like the Navy isn't going to get their trophy after all."

He turned to his staff officer. "Recall the bombers."

=O=

Two thousand kilometers above the surface of the Earth, a blunted, olive-green cone of epoxy and metal arced soundlessly across the heavens.

Below it stretched the black, empty expanse of the Indian Ocean. To its east, the lights of Perth and Darwin glittered, tracing an outline of Western Australia in a featureless ocean of night. To the west, beyond a line where night met day, beckoned the beaches of Africa, basking in the glow of the sun for a few more hours before the rotation of the Earth swallowed them, too, in darkness.

The cone fell south, its great forward speed carrying it to distant lands even as gravity inexorably pulled it back to earth. Bound only by gravity as it travelled through the empty void, its path was as predictable as that of the celestial bodies with which it shared the heavens. Dispassionate. Immutable. _Ballistic. _

One thousand kilometers above the Indian Ocean, a timer in the cone fell to zero, setting the intricate machinery of the warhead in motion.

Like all thermonuclear warheads, the cone consisted of three parts. In the nose, a spherical fission bomb "primary". In the tail, a cylindrical fusion device, a "secondary". Together, they were enclosed in a single large egg-shaped "radiation case" of dense uranium, to contain the intense energies of the atomic explosion just long enough for the device to work.

Deep within the cone, the primary sprang to life. A hollow sphere of chemical explosives detonated, crushing the core of weapons-grade uranium in its grasp.

Fueled by the sudden emergence of a dense sea of fissile uranium nuclei, neutrons in the core ran wild, blasting nuclei apart and releasing more neutrons, which blasted more nuclei apart, which released more neutrons in a runaway feeding frenzy of nuclear chain reactions. Vast energies were unlocked and released, and, for a moment, the compressed core, now a ball of plasma, shone as hot as the core of the sun, shining upon the rest of the cone-shaped chamber, its light – hotter than blue, hotter than ultraviolet - the color of x-ray. Ghosting through the plastic packing of the device as if it did not exist, the x-rays reflected from the cheap, natural uranium walls of the radiation case (for x-rays cannot penetrate metal with ease), flooded the egg-shaped chamber…

…and converged on the cylinder of the secondary at the other end of the cone. Under the harsh x-ray light of the core, the uranium sheath (the "tamper") of the cylinder vaporized, crushing the cylinder within it in its grasp as the uranium tamper expanded into a superheated gob of plasma.

The cylinder within the tamper was filled with lithium deuteride. Crushed by the expanding plasma cylinder like a man in an overinflated lifejacket, it reached magnificent densities – fit for the core of a sun. A smaller lump of uranium, buried deep within the lithium deuteride, crushed by the plasma, flared to life at just the right moment…

…igniting the lithium deuteride in a thermonuclear inferno. In an instant, the lithium disintegrated into tritium, which fused with the deuterium, releasing vast gobs of energy and an immense flood of fast neutrons.

Nuclear fusion, driven by the power of fission.

The cheap natural uranium tamper and the cheap natural uranium radiation case had not fissioned under the hail of neutrons from the initial initiation of the primary core. Like damp wood around a fireplace, they had been inert. But now they all burned, split, and transmuted as they were engulfed by a thermonuclear inferno of fast neutrons, adding their energies to the flames.

The fission-fusion-fission inferno was all over in a few millionths of a second, well before the puny energies of the chemical explosives could even begin to contemplate disassembling the device.

In a few millionths of a second, energies equivalent to two million tonnes of TNT were unlocked and unleashed within the diminutive warhead – barely the size of a small car. From such a tiny space, these energies could only be expressed as a spectacular explosion of x-rays.

As the immense blast of x-rays heated the sparse molecules littering the vacuum of space to incandescence, night turned to day over the moonlit waters of the Indian Ocean, as a brilliant ball of light shone briefly upon the sleeping millions of Western Australia and Indonesia before fading from view.

An electromagnetic pulse swept the empty skies and lonely waters of the southern Indian Ocean, as electrons were knocked from their atoms by gamma rays – a tiny but important minority among the products of the intiation. A few ships in transit suffered varying degrees of damage to onboard electronics.

But the work of the warhead was not done.

Electrons now filled the sky over the Indian Ocean. The vast cloud of electrons began clawing its way out of Earth's gravity well, only to be caught in the vast loops of the terrestrial magnetic field – invisible lines of magnetic flux that spring from the ground, arc high over the Earth, and return to the ground at a point on the opposite side of the magnetic equator.

The cloud split in two, following the magnetic field lines north and south.

The cloud travelling southwards was sucked downward towards the surface of the Earth almost immediately, hitting the atmosphere directly under the blast. The cloud travelling northwards arced high over the surface of the Earth, plunging into the atmosphere over East Asia, smothering the sky in shimmering curtains of red and green as charged ions were neutralized by the vast bulk of the atmosphere.

More electrons, caught in the vast terrestrial magnetic field, diffused around and over the blue marble, bathing the vast emptiness of near-earth space in an ever-thinning sea of high-energy particles. Electrons slammed into into spacecraft, satellites and space factories, damaging delicate solid-state circuitry, degrading solar panels, and giving astronauts scurrying for radiation shelters uncomfortably high doses of radiation.

Far below the aurorae, six hundred million Pacificans, enjoying the picnics, carnivals, and other attractions of the Mid-Autumn festival, turned their eyes skyward, mouths agape in awe.

=O=

The Secretary, still dressed in his pajamas, rubbed his aching head as he walked into the Big Office. On his day off too. His wife was going to kill him for sure. And his daughters had spent so much effort preparing for the picnic tonight too…

"Someone get me the Soviet Ambassador! We want an explanation on what the hell this was, whether the missile was under Indian or Soviet control, whether this was a simple test, a demonstration or a preface to an ultimatum, and we want it now!" The Secretary gratefully accepted a glass of water from an aide, and downed it with a gulp.

At least traffic had been light this morning.

The press coordinator walked up to him. "How do we want to spin this? Should we try to bury this, footnote it?"

The Secretary grimaced. "The _fun_ thing about their little stunt… the _reason _that we're dealing with a national emergency… is that, courtesy of the Earth's magnetic field, half the Eastern Hemisphere saw them set that nuke off. Auroral effects." He chuckled. "And we have no idea whether the damned Soviets wanted _that _either, because their embassy _still_ hasn't made a goddamned statement on the incident!"

The press coordinator chewed his lip. "So… what do you want us to say?"

The Secretary hesitated, and clutched his head as his mind raced through the possibilities.

"Sir, press reports are already coming in from Sichuan and Yunnan talking about a _Soviet nuclear attack underway_. We need to make a statement, and we need to make it now!"

The Secretary nodded. "Keep it short, and keep it factual. Emphasize that the aurorae are harmless. Get out there now."

"No. I'll make the statement myself."

An unassuming middle-aged man had just walked into the room. Between the gentle expression on his face, greying hair and sensible suit, he could've been mistaken for someone's kindly uncle, out for a spot of dim sum, or a manager of a small firm.

"Mr. President."

The President spoke at a slow, measured pace. "Richard. I know you think we should have answers before we make a definitive statement. But right now, the people need reassurance more than they need answers."

He stroked his chin. "But they will get answers. Because there's no way in hell we're letting the Soviets get away with this."

=O=

_Author's note: _

_KABOOM! Readers are advised to look up pictures of Starfish Prime, a US high altitude nuclear test, to see what nuclear auroral phenomena look like. _

_The only ever "all up" ballistic missile test with a live warhead conducted by the USA was shot Frigate Bird, a test of a Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile, conducted as part of Operation Dominic in 1962. So there is some precedent for this mode of weapons testing - but never in such a provocative manner. _


	21. Intense Crisis

Thanks to CajunBear73, Skrillwriter, and everyone else for their reviews and input.

=O=

Chapter 21: Intense Crisis

Wuhan

Hubei Province, Joint Government of the Pacific

The neighborhood echoed with the laughter of children, running after each other in games of tag under the light of the full moon.

Ingrid Hofferson smiled at a small boy as he ran through their backyard, clutching a softly glowing paper lantern on the end of a stick. The kid gave a wave, and Ingrid waved back.

A whoop rang through the night, and, across the fences of the neighborhood, a small gout of flame roared skyward as some older children, in the infinite unwisdom of youth, finished dumping the last of their glowing candles into a cake tin. Hopefully, nobody would get seriously injured.

Ingrid had just finished hanging up the washing when her husband came out of the house. She rushed to his side as he stepped past the sliding door.

"You should know better than to come out here alone, with those knees of yours! And a head injury is no joke at our age!"

Arvid Hofferson smiled even as his aching knees, a product of one too many hard parachute landings, protested strongly to his exertions. "Oh, poppycock! I can walk perfectly well, arms or no arms! I even did the grocery shopping the other day. Granted, I had help, but still…"

He shrugged to emphasize the point, moving his empty sleeve and his stump – injuries courtesy of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force.

"Sit down!" His wife motioned to the lawn chairs, and he duly laid back. "Why do you insist on worrying me so?"

He smiled. "Why do you insist on hanging up the washing instead of using the dryer?"

"I told you, it's easier on the clothes. And sunlight is cheaper than electricity!" Ingrid lay down on her lawn chair.

"And I told you, I want to spend more time outdoors. With my wife." He chuckled.

They both chuckled, and gazed upwards at the glorious full moon.

Arvid cleared his throat. "Astrid's letter came in today, you know. She flew a combat mission last week! Got shot at too!"

Ingrid bit her lip. The day they'd signed the treaty ending the Amur War had been the third-happiest day of her life.

Because it meant her little girl wouldn't have to go over Siberia again.

"What's she doing getting shot at?! We aren't at war with those dirty Communists over the border already, are we?"

Arvid swallowed. "I know you worry, but she's flying the best planes we have. She'll be fine. In happier news, she went to Atomland as a treat! Got to see a nuclear test!"

Ingrid nodded. "Good to see her enjoying herself a little instead of sending every penny back here."

Arvid made a noise. "Well, she managed to get a young lad to go with her, so the car rental was cheap."

Ingrid sat up. "Finally! What's his name! What's he like!"

Arvid shrugged. "Now, honey, let's not get ahead of ourselves; there's nothing in here that says…"

"What on Earth is that?!" Ingrid squinted at the sky, and Arvid followed her gaze.

The sky over the suburb, somewhat isolated from the artificial lighting of the urban core, had been studded with stars as usual. But now, diffuse curtains of red, violet, and green snaked across the sky, undulating and pulsing with mesmerizing steadiness.

"The northern lights? Here?" Ingrid's jaw had gone wide. "That can't be right. Oh dear, what if it's a solar storm?! Those poor astronauts! What will this do to the Mars mission schedule?!"

Arvid smiled faintly as his wife began fretting over the possibility of avionics damage to the two Mars-bound nuclear-thermal-rocket spacecraft, currently being assembled in Low Orbit, and thanked his lucky stars that he had married such an intelligent, thoughtful, and hardworking woman. With some shame, he reflected on his missing arms and barely adequate disability benefits.

"Wow! That's odd." Their neighbors had come out to see the light show. "What _is_ that?"

"Guys, guys! The radio's saying there's a nuclear war on! You know how those high-altitude tests over the Pacific made those pretty lights! Those are the same lights!" Mr. Qin from across the street huffed and puffed as he ran into the garden.

"Nuclear war?! Why?"

"A sneak attack, like the Japanese invasion!"

"Wow, could those lights be radioactive?! Are we all going to get radiation burns?"

Ingrid stood. "Now, now, let's not give in to panic. I hear no sirens, and see no flashes. Even if the aurorae _are_ the result of a nuclear detonation, they are not going to be radioactive. Let's go inside and turn on the television."

Arvid followed his neighbors into the house, sitting down to take off his shoes. He found everyone gathered around the color television – the best in the neighborhood, Arvid thought proudly.

Mr. Qin was listening intently to the radio, the knob on which had been turned to the blue Civil Defense triangle. He shook his head. Nothing.

On the TV, in full color, children with flickering lanterns leapt three meters into the air as they chased each other through the cavernous grey environs of a gargantuan lunar lava tube. The broadcast of the Mid-Autumn celebrations at the experimental Lunar Colony was still on, apparently.

"There's nothing about the lights on this channel either."

"Shhh…"

_"We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this special report. The President will now address the nation." _

=O=

"My fellow Pacificans. Roughly ten minutes ago, the Communist Bloc conducted an unannounced high-altitude nuclear test over the uninhabited center of the Indian Ocean, similar to those we have conducted over the uninhabited islands of the Pacific. Such tests have been found to generate spectacular and beautiful lights in the sky, better described as auroral phenomena, both over the immediate vicinity of the tests and at some distance – up to thousands of kilometers - away. To people on Earth, these aurorae are completely harmless and identical in nature to the naturally occurring northern lights. They arise when the upper atmosphere absorbs atmospheric particles energized by the sun, an electric space thruster, or a powerful blast. As such, citizens in much of the Mainland who may have had the pleasure to see such aurorae may rest easy with the knowledge that they have seen a very rare – and quite spectacular - harmless geophysical phenomenon."

=O=

Astrid and Hiccup walked into the Officer's Club just as the scientific advisor finished speaking. The packed restaurant slowly resumed its usual hubbub as eyes drifted from the television.

Hiccup frowned. "Not a single word on casualties in orbit, or damage to our space infrastructure." He chewed his lip nervously, and shook his head.

"Or the fact that it was a ballistic missile launch!" Snotlout waved his fist at the television.

Ruffnut cocked her head. "What do you mean?"

Snotlout slammed his glass against the table. "What I mean is that four minutes before the aurora went live, half the damned squadron and every alert bomber on the base got scrambled! They picked the damned thing up on radar, thought it might have been live, and scrambled us!"

Hiccup gazed upwards in thought. "Where could they possibly have launched it from?"

Astrid waved a bartender over. "A ship?"

Hiccup stroked his chin. "I'm thinking along the lines of Soviet Kazakhstan. Overfly Afghanistan, overfly India, kaboom."

Astrid took a sip. "Too risky. I vote for a submarine. We launched a live ballistic missile from a Polaris sub just a few years back. So the Soviets have a secure second strike now. That's good news."

Hiccup nodded. "That would be _great_ news. The Soviets won't have to worry about a sneak attack from us, and won't have to maintain such an aggressive preemptive nuclear posture. Everyone gets to back off, tensions go down a bit, and the strategic situation stabilizes a little more."

He felt the reservation slip in his pocket. "So… Astrid. We had a lot of fun at Atomland, and I was thinking that maybe… you might want to go to…"

Astrid turned pale. _Goddamnit Hiccup! Not here! Not now! This place is loud, but not…_

Snotlout took a seat behind Astrid. "So what's this about a trip to nerdtown? I'd certainly like to know more, just so I can arrange something better. An awesome trip for an awesome girl. And guy."

…_not loud enough._ She glared at Hiccup.

Hiccup, completely missing her cue, stood. "It was fun. You know, Snotlout, _some _people learn to appreciate the technology that keeps civilization running instead of playing status games like a bunch of monkeys! If you just kept an open mind like Astrid did…"

Astrid stood, and gave Hiccup a shove.

Snotlout laughed. "Finally dumping the fishbone for a real man, eh, Astrid! Hey everyone!"

Astrid froze.

"Astrid Hofferson went on one date with Hiccup Haddock, and dumped his sorry ass!" Snotlout raised his hands in triumph even as three quarters of the audience turned away from Snotlout's ludicrous gesture in disgust.

_Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Plan. Plan. Sensible response. _

Astrid gulped. "Unlike you, Jorgenson, _I _do not have a rich Colonel for a daddy. And neither does my highly competent backseater get checks every week from his daddy to feed his habits." She took a deep breath. "And as Pacifican citizens and military personnel, we have a duty to familiarize ourselves with the nuclear technology of this new age – for our moral as much as our professional development! As such, I took a _day _trip to the Lop Nur nuclear test site to witness a nuclear detonation at my _personal_ expense. To defray the costs of car rental, I brought my backseater along! Is that clear, Jorgenson?!" She turned to Hiccup. "I will not be mocked for a professional trip."

The room had fallen silent, and for a moment Astrid thought she had gotten some form of reprieve.

Then the bartender turned the volume up on the television.

"…this special report. The Indian government has just made a public statement regarding the high-altitude nuclear test on All India Radio, the Indian state radio and television service. We are receiving this footage live by satellite from our offices in East Pakistan. The contents of this broadcast may shock you."

The Indian Prime Minister, his scowling visage frozen midsentence, appeared on the screen.

The video was choppy and blurred, and the Prime Minster's voice grated with noise – the result of hurriedly converting from TV to tape, and then to a digital format suitable for satellite transmission, and then back to broadcast TV. Someone had evidently cut a lot of corners (and paid for a very good satellite connection) to scoop the other news channels.

But the message was clear enough.

"Through the herculean efforts of the Indian people and our great friend, the Soviet Union, we, in the utmost secrecy, have assembled on the sacred soil of India a great arsenal of thermonuclear bombs to defend our nation."

Astrid gaped as the Prime Minister continued to describe the effort at length. _ The broadcast is in English. Why is it in English?_

"In addition to nuclear rocket artillery to bolster our ground forces, we now have at our disposal scores of long-range missiles, capable of reaching any city in the Mainland Joint Government within ten minutes of launch!"

Astrid nodded. _Ah. It was intended for international consumption._

"And… to demonstrate the ability of these forces to defend the sacred soil of India at any time, we have conducted a test of one of our missiles! This test, witnessed by half the globe, was completely successful!"

Snotlout cheered. "See? See! I was right!"

"SHHHH!"

"With the might of the Atom on our side, it will no longer be possible for the Imperialists to bully our great nation! We shall emerge victorious from this great struggle!"

The broadcast ended, but the room remained silent. "What… the heck… just happened?!"

Hiccup's jaw closed. "They just pulled off a _fait accompli. _The Indians have a nuclear weapons sharing agreement with the Soviets, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it short of all-out war."

Snotlout jeered. "Well, the Administration certainly screwed the pooch on this one. Biggest screwup since the Nip invasion. Economic security my ass. No way am I voting for those bastards again." He headed for the door.

Hiccup turned to Astrid. "Astrid, did you really mean what you said about…"

Astrid glared at Hiccup. "I thought we were past this. I thought you were smarter than this…" She paused as she caught a glimpse of Hiccup's face. Dear god, he was pleading. His face was always so obvious.

_Of course I meant what I said, dummy. You're a colleague and a friend. Can't people go on trips with friends anymore without wanton speculation? _

She stared into the hurt in Hiccup's eyes – why did he have to stare directly into hers?

_Yeah, so what was with the flirting? Wasn't that a tad excessive? I didn't even try to act professional! He's nice. And I trust him completely… and I liked his company… _

_And he's screwing you over all the same! He's caused nothing but problems for you since the first day you met him. He's causing problems now! _

_He always tried his best. It wasn't his fault. He had a crush on you for years – and yes, don't kid yourself, you knew about it! You need to say something! _

Hiccup's eyes were dancing around Astrid's face now, trying to find some answer, any answer in Astrid's hard-set expression.

_You need to function. To work. You can't work with the squadron scuttlebutt all over your case! You can't work when you're wasting time thinking about his case! _

"Hiccup, just stop asking questions. I can't handle you right now. You're a huge _problem_, you know that?" Astrid blurted.

"Well… would you still like to go to a nice restaurant with me?"

"No." Astrid barked.

Hiccup's inquisitive face disintegrated into a puzzled mess. "Astrid, I'm just trying to…"

Astrid groaned. "Just stop trying, Hiccup. Not now."

Hiccup's face fell as persistence and curiosity failed him once again, as they had failed him so, so many times before throughout his twenty-eight years on the Blue Planet. "Okay, Astrid. Okay. Dagnabit. Double dagnabit." He began to nod.

Astrid rolled her eyes.

The squadron XO jogged in through the front door. "Hey people! We've just been bumped up to Defcon 2! CO wants us called in and ready for strategic missions stat!"

Astrid got to her feet, and dragged Hiccup to his. "Not now, Hiccup. Do your job."

=O=

Northeastern India

The Soviet Major and his missileers cheered wildly as the Indian Prime Minister finished his rousing speech on the radio. Amidst rounds of vodka, he went over to shake the hands and kiss the cheeks of his newly-trained Indian technicians and security troops, without whom this heroic undertaking would have been impossible.

Over two hundred strategic missiles – he had not been told how many – had been transported from the heart of the Soviet Union to dispersal complexes across the length and breadth of India, along with the necessary air defenses and support bases, in what amounted to _complete secrecy._

He brimmed with pride at the great achievement, some small part of which, he knew in his heart, was his own. This would be a story to tell the grandkids - the happiest day of his military career.

His thoughts turned to his wife. In a few months he would be going home, and other officers rotated to watch over the missiles even as Indian technicians increasingly replaced Soviet ones.

With the unassailable might of their fraternal socialist ally, the Soviet Union, firmly and _indisputably_ entrenched on their soil, nobody would ever bully India again.

=O=

Arvid Hofferson turned off the TV. "Well, that was… odd." He turned to his neighbors, and frowned, puzzled. "Where's Mr. Chan?"

Mr. Qin shrugged. "Probably went off to the supermarket to stock up on food. I'm… also heading there, once I get my car keys." He ran off.

Ingrid came down the stairs, fear in her eyes, and gave him a big hug. "I'm going off to the supermarket to buy a few things." She whispered. "S.O.P. for this sort of thing."

Arvid nodded. "You survived four years of war. This crisis'll blow over in a few days, two weeks tops. We'll be fine."

Ingrid hugged him tighter. "I… don't want our little girl to go!"

Arvid nodded sagely as the screech of tires and panicked motorists filled the suburb. "Astrid's going to be fine. Believe me. Believe in her."

=O=

_Author's note, 9/3/2020:_

_I posted Ch 7, where I established Astrid's hometown to have been Wuhan, sometime around Christmas, at around the same time a small cluster of unusual viral pneumonias were noticed by medical professionals in that most unfortunate city. After a week to tally up the numbers, nail down the details, convince everyone that they weren't just jumpy in the middle of flu season, and write and proofread the papers, detailed reports were submitted to the WHO __and the news trickled onto the airwaves. It took scientists worldwide two more weeks to figure out that human beings could spread the disease, and about as much time to isolate and sequence the virus responsible and get test kits in the pipeline. __One week after that, on 23/1,__ with a thousand known cases in Wuhan, the Chinese quarantined the city in the middle of a major holiday, buying the world four precious weeks of prep time at great human and economic cost. _

_I wrote Ch. 7 in early December, long before COVID-19 was ever on anyone's radar._

_I picked Wuhan for Blackbird for the same reasons the outbreak spread so rapidly in January: Wuhan is a major industrial center, a city (now) of twelve million, and a major transport hub. Major road and rail connections linking northern, southern, and western China run through the city, which also dominates the lower reaches of the Yangtze river (think St. Louis). For those same reasons, in Real History, Wuhan was briefly made temporary capital of the Republic of China during WWII before it was overrun by the Japanese in a prolonged campaign. The Japanese capture of the strategically-located city was devastating to the Chinese war effort (in war, capturing crossroads, rail links, highways, transport hubs, etc, etc, is very important if you want to win). _

_But it was pure coincidence otherwise._

_I plotted out the panic buying months ago (this happens a lot in civil defense films); it is also pure coincidence that I have reached this point in my story now, as COVID-19 begins hitting the United States. Don't panic, cook food thoroughly, wash hands frequently*, DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE, NOSE OR MOUTH (really hard, I know), avoid crowded gatherings if possible, avoid overseas vacations, and follow instructions. Exercise best judgement, but it is probable that supply chains will be fine for the medium-term, and stores will be overflowing with essentials in no time._

_(*Wash hands well, with soap: 7 steps: palms, interlace fingers, back of hand, back of fingers, thumb, fingernails/tips - rub them against your palm, and finally wrists. Lather then repeat under running water. When using a mask, DON'T touch the outside - that's contaminated - and make sure you cover the bridge of your nose with the deformable metal bar)_


	22. Limited Objectives, Limited Wars

Thanks to CajunBear73, OeshsnerC, and everyone else for their reviews and commentary.

=O=

Chapter 22: Limited Objectives, Limited Wars

A marvel of the space age, the videophone permitted real-time face-to-face intercontinental communications via the new communications platforms in geostationary orbit. Assembled on-orbit by teams of astronaut-technicians, the communications platforms were fitted with solar arrays and radio dishes far larger than could be packed into a single heavy-lift rocket. This, in turn, meant that the ground terminals of the videophone system - satellite dish, cathode-ray-tube console, and low maintenance solid-state electronics - could be kept compact, no larger than a household refrigerator, in fact.

For once, Stoick Haddock was grateful for the idiotic contraption, on which so much of his time had been wasted on pointless midnight meetings with Portland. He took his seat before the console, right next to General Kwok.

Heather joined him. "We completely dropped the ball on this one. Indicators were all there – I've got pictures of Soviet missile support equipment two weeks old. But between the buildup on the Pak border, the border crisis, and the fact that strategic nukes in India made no military sense whatsoever… we just weren't _looking_ for strategic nuclear missiles, and so we missed 'em completely."

Heather shook her head. "I still can't believe the Reds actually did have a card up their sleeves. Or that it was strategic nukes. I mean, what's the military difference between a mid-range missile in India and a mid-range missile in Siberia?! A minute or two of flight time, maybe? Why would you even bother expending the effort to move those missiles all the way to India? But politically? A world of difference!"

Stoick grunted. "Ace in the hole?"

Heather's eyes narrowed. "Hardly. The Indians are still miscalculating – they expect us to fold out of weakness even when we still have cards to play. They let _us_ decide whether we let them win this. They _were _being stupid. We just didn't count on them going this far."

Heather took a sip of water, and sighed. "Ace or not, heads are going to roll, believe me."

Stoick chuckled. "Not our heads. We both considered the possibility of a hidden Indian card, and we _both_ told our people to get on with finding out what it was. In writing, right here." He patted a small folder. "Our asses are covered."

Heather grinned as the videophone flickered to life.

The President of the Joint Government appeared on the screen, flanked by the Secretary, the Director of State Intelligence, the VP, and more brass than a symphony orchestra. Heather's grin faded, and she gulped.

=O=

"…and live by satellite, we have our theater commander, Stoick Haddock and his staff, who will be joining us today to give… his perspective on the military situation."

The President nodded.

General Drago Bludvist, Strategic Air Command – who finally seemed smaller than someone else in the room – continued. "To continue my point, the Air Force… is of the opinion that we will not be able to destroy all the Indian nuclear missiles with conventional airstrikes alone. Nuclear airstrikes will be necessary to ensure destruction of the target set."

"General Haddock, your opinion?" Another general spoke.

The lag was just perceptible. "A major limiting factor on airstrikes is often availability of timely targeting information…"

Drago leaned forward. "General Haddock's force posture… is geared towards support of ground troops in a _very _limited war. Not for an extended air campaign over hostile airspace to destroy… a set of very dispersed _strategic_ targets. Such a campaign will require _strategic_ forces and preparations for… unlimited global thermonuclear war! The border dispute is now wholly irrelevant!"

A white-suited Admiral sneered. "If the goal is to get the Soviets to withdraw their missiles, then a _naval_ blockade is the best way to exert pressure on the Indians, and ensure no more nuclear missiles enter India. _Unlike_ the Air Force, the Fifth Fleet is ready and able to execute this mission."

The Secretary groaned. "A blockade is an act of war! The strategic balance is not changed one whit by this development! In a nuclear war, we still lose ten percent of our population; they still lose ninety percent of theirs! Soviet medium-range missiles can still reach most of the Mainland in under fifteen minutes. Whether the missiles are launched from Siberia or India doesn't change a thing! It's not as if the Soviets have missiles in, say, Venezuela, where they can reach North America in fifteen minutes instead of half an hour!"

"Every minute is precious in a scramble!" Drago roared.

The Secretary rolled his eyes. "That wasteland is not worth a nuclear war!"

Drago scoffed. "The wasteland is irrelevant! India has obtained nuclear weapons! That is unacceptable!"

The Secretary cracked a chuckle. "I'm sorry to break it to you, General, but it has long been the consensus of this Administration that an Indian atom bomb is acceptable to us. The atom bomb will teach India caution. They will come to realize – as the Soviets have, which is why they're playing with proxies - that having the bomb lifts any inhibitions on us loosing nukes on them, and that plain belligerence will get them all killed. We expected the Indians to get a Bomb within five years anyway, even with minimal Soviet assistance. We have lost nothing worth nuclear war."

He turned to the President. "Mr. President, we must consider accepting the Soviet _fait accompli, _and explore non-kinetic retaliatory options such as basing nuclear weapons in West Pakistan, Burma, and Iran. We have been able to contain, for the most part, a nuclear-armed Soviet Union. We will most certainly be able to contain a more-reasonable nuclear-armed India."

"Bullshit!" Drago bellowed.

The President closed his eyes as the upper echelons of government argued like squabbling children. "Stop."

The room fell silent.

The President leaned forward, a serious expression on his face. "Gentlemen. Ladies. Let's get back to basics. What _exactly_ have we lost from the Soviet emplacement of nuclear missiles in India?"

He gestured at the Secretary. "Richard here is correct. The strategic balance has not changed. So we have not lost our strategic superiority."

The Secretary smiled, but the President's face turned hard. "But we have lost something. What we have lost… is face. Prestige. We magnanimously tried to compromise with the Indians, and they shove this in our face even while they keep pushing our positions in the mountains. We are a reasonable people. This was not necessary."

The President turned to Drago. "And no, General. The border crisis is not irrelevant. It is the key by which the Indians can lord their victory over us – a victory borne from a Soviet nuclear umbrella."

"The message that is being sent is unacceptable. Gain a Soviet nuclear umbrella, and you can do whatever you want with the Joint Government. That sets a bad precedent. That is the truly unacceptable element in this crisis, and I'm sure our analysts will agree."

He looked around the room, and into the videophone camera. "So what should we do about it?"

He rubbed his chin. "What was the border crisis about? Land? Money? What money was there to be found in that wasteland? It was about the exact same thing. Prestige. Face. Do not be unduly frightened by the introduction of nuclear weapons. The fundamental dynamics of the situation are unchanged. The Indians have but made some noise, given us some new headaches, and upped the stakes _substantially_."

"Therefore, our response should be unchanged." He stared directly into the camera. "General Haddock, what was the goal of your war plan before the Indian test?"

Stoick grunted. "To temporarily occupy the disputed territory, hold it against Indian attack, and then withdraw back to the Indian claim line."

The President snapped his fingers."Exactly. The goal was never to conquer anything. The goal was to _demonstrate_, in a clear and indisputable manner, our_ ability_ to take and hold the territory, and emphasize that our willingness to compromise was borne from good faith, and not as a result of Indian pressure or Pacifican weakness."

The President narrowed his eyes. "But no. The Soviet nuclear missiles in India are not acceptable either." He turned to the intelligence chief. "Director, for what reasons did we choose to accept the Indian nuclear program?"

The Director of State Intelligence shrugged. "We expected to have the Sentinel missile defense system online within five years – adequate to blunt any conceivable attack by the small Indian arsenal anticipated. Not the Soviet arsenal they're shipping in." He sighed. "We also thought that the Bomb would teach the Indian government caution, and that an independent Indian deterrent would help reduce Soviet influence in India."

"Aha! Therein lies the difference! A man who has earned his own fortune through honest work appreciates the value of money, and is beholden to no one!" The President scoffed. "But now the Indians are like a man who has suddenly come into an inheritance. Wild, reckless with his fortune. Dangerous. And in thrall to his family. The Indians must be taught a lesson in moderation. And the Soviets must be taught a lesson in handing out nuclear weapons to fools and fanatics."

He smiled. "Whatever plan you military men decide on, the immediate goal should be clear. It is not to _destroy_ all the nuclear weaponry and missiles the Soviets have emplaced in India – that is a difficult task without thermonuclear war, as you have said. The goal is to _demonstrate_ our _ability_ to destroy most of those nuclear weapons and then all of Indian society if they ever use them, so that we may put pressure on them at the negotiating table. This demonstration is not only for the eyes of India, but for the eyes of the Soviet Union, and beyond them, the eyes of the world. How best to achieve that goal, I shall leave to you military men."

The Secretary inhaled sharply. "Won't that eventually put them into a use-it-or-lose it?"

The President shrugged. "The Soviets have missiles everywhere else, have they not? Their main stock of missiles is not being threatened. The Indians need only be persuaded that the Soviet nuclear umbrella is not as helpful as it seems."

_Easier said than done. _Stoick's mouth went dry.

Drago's eyes widened in horror. "You want to risk the lives of hundreds of my magnificently trained aircrews in _mock _bombing runs over dense air defenses… to _demonstrate _a point?! You risk the survival of our nation, our ability to massively destroy the enemy in a concerted blow… to _demonstrate _that capability?! We can win this war, and _permanently _eradicate the Soviet Communism from the face of this Earth… and you want to _demonstrate_ that you can?"

Stoick gulped. The President felt no need to respond.

The Vice President, a retired general who had led the Army to victory over Nazidom from the Channel to the Elbe, nodded firmly. "You forget your place, General Bludvist. This is the Joint Government of the Pacific. The Armed Forces exist to serve the political goals of the Administration of the day." His voice turned to ice. "_You_ do not set policy. _We_ set policy."

The room fell silent for a moment. The Vice President leaned back, and rubbed his chin. "Sir, we will have to let our boys shoot up enemy airfields and SAM sites at least."

The President nodded. "Of course. Shutting down Indian air defenses will be more than _demonstrative_ of our air superiority."

Drago fell silent, and the room began to resume its normal tenor. The Vice President tilted his head. "Boys… is what is being asked of our Armed Forces militarily feasible? Can we actually accomplish this mission – achieve air superiority across all of India with contingency planning for escalation?"

An Air Force four-star nodded. "It'll be tight. But geography is to some extent working in our favor. India is 'only' two thousand kilometers across at its widest – well within the combat radius of ADC Blackbirds flying from the Mainland, Iran, or Myanmar, let alone Valkyries. Three quarters of the country is within five hundred kilometers of the Indian Ocean, well within range of carrier air or even carrier Search and Rescue. Air Force SAR can also cover the entire Ganges valley from Nepal." He nodded distastefully at the Admiral. "Between Naval Aviation and the Air Force, we… could gain complete air superiority over India in a reasonable amount of time – I'll have to pull the figures up from the old plans…"

"Ten days." Stoick said. "The figure was ten days to suppress and then destroy SAMs and airfields. I have the contingency plans on hand." He frowned. "Additional forces will be required if this air superiority effort is to occur concurrently with the ground war – if we decide to proceed with Operation Avalanche at all."

The President nodded. "Of course we will! There can be no question of cancelling the ground war. The ground war is the key to emerging victorious from this whole crisis, to demonstrating our ability to wage war despite the Soviet nuclear umbrella, to demonstrating its _impotence_!"

_Bait for the Soviet tactical nuclear arsenal, to give us the excuse to go strategic or rub their impotence in their face. _Stoick thought. _Just like in Europe. _

_You nuke our ground forces, we nuke you. Come on, I dare you. _

General Kwok shrugged. "They're all airmobile and light forces, reasonably dispersed. If we give them back their nuclear rocket launchers... we should be able to fight on a nuclear battlefield for maybe a day, maybe less depending on the fallout. More than enough time to bring nuclear air support into play, if it comes to that."

The Admiral leaned forward. "Should we still blockade the Indians?" With a mission for Naval Aviation in the bag, he was no longer quite as enthusiastic about the endless patrols a blockade of the vast Indian coastline would entail.

The Secretary nodded. "We can call it a quarantine if we want. We'll board and search a selection of ships entering Indian ports, and turn away ships carrying weapons. Then we see how they respond. If they don't fold… we roll into the disputed area, up the blockade, mine their harbors, and take over Indian airspace. If they don't fold…we blast their missile sites with conventional or nuclear airstrikes and just hold the disputed area indefinitely..." He trailed off, thinking of everything that could go wrong with the plan.

The President chuckled. "Good, good! The best part is that we can conceivably claim victory at any point!"

Stoick shook his head. "The Indians could hide their SAMs. Act as a force-in-being, take potshots, and bleed us dry over their airspace for months! The wear and tear on machines and men will be ruinous even without casualties!"

"After we smash Indian airfields and fixed SAM sites in one concerted campaign, we just need to control the airspace over the disputed sector." The Air Force four-star looked thoughtful. "After destruction of the biggest and most expensive SAMs, high altitude supersonic aircraft - Blackbirds and Valkyries, maybe Hustlers - should be able to operate with relative impunity over all of India even if the rest of their air defense net is still up and running."

The Secretary nodded. "We can scale the effort up and down as the situation evolves."

General Bludvist finally spoke up again. "My boys and ADC's need approval to begin reconnaissance flights as soon as possible… before we commit to the operational plan."

The Vice President nodded. "You have it. Fly over every inch of India if you must. Just find those missiles!"

Stoick trembled at the magnitude of the monumental task before him. This wasn't a tiny little country, like Nepal or Sri Lanka. This wasn't even Japan. This was India, a nation of five hundred million people spread across three million square kilometers. Yes, he had contingency plans for such a war, but he'd never actually thought he'd need them!

This was perhaps the worst case of mission creep he had ever faced in his career.

The Secretary sighed. "This all sounds solid in outline, but I'll have our people do some analytical work, see if there's anything we missed." He gulped. "For one, as much as it is strategically irrelevant, the Soviet nuclear umbrella isn't impotent. What are our missile defense options?"

The Army man shrugged. "We have a few modified Hawk, Nike-Hercules, and Nike-Zeus missile batteries that could provide limited protection to troops in-theater, and maybe a few key cities. But only if they're nuclear-tipped." He shook his head. "Sentinel isn't going to be ready in time for this, no matter how much we spend."

"We believe our aircraft have a limited ability to intercept MRBMs as they launch… with nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles." An ADC general piped.

The Secretary gulped. "You want nuclear release authorization for nuclear surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles. Defensive weapons only?"

The Air Force man shrugged noncommittally.

The President nodded. "Approved. Better nukes in the sky than nukes falling on Shanghai and Chongqing. And tt'll show them we mean business."

The Secretary looked horrified. _War is not so simple. War is never so simple. Trying to control it so is madness..._

The President smiled jovially as he examined the Secretary's expression. "I would not be too concerned. If warheads fall on Shanghai and Chongqing, Soviet Communism shall indeed be eradicated from the face of the Earth. Because at the end of the day… the strategic balance is still in our favor. We can afford to escalate. They cannot."

He inhaled sharply. "Prepare a press release once we're done. Let's make sure the Indians and Soviets understand clearly what we're trying to prove."

=O=

_Author's note: _

_Don't laugh. This is extremely impressive 70s-equivalent tech – satellite communications suites are things that usually fit on Navy warships, not aircraft or briefcases. _


	23. World-wide Embargo or Blockade

Thanks to CajunBear73, OechsnerC, and everyone else for their reviews and commentary

=O=

_Warning: depiction of the unethical use of child soldiers._

_The use of child soldiers is highly unethical, and not acceptable unless in extremis. The author is of the opinion that, in-story, the Headmistress's position is probably incorrect – i.e. the conditions of the ongoing total war depicted do not justify at all the use of children as active combatants – in fact, it is a gross misallocation of scarce wartime resources. Relatively safe rear areas (the free half of the mainland) still exist, and children can still be evacuated to them. Readers are as usual encouraged to come to their own conclusions, but this author would like to emphasize that the practice is highly unethical._

_On the other hand, HTTYD gave Astrid an ax to kill people with, but that was in a fantasy preindustrial setting, so, uh... on with the story! _

=O=

Chapter 23: 'Peaceful' Embargo or Blockade

Fourteen years earlier

Wuhan, Hubei Province, Joint Government of the Pacific

Crack! Crack!

The exigencies of war had required that the school soccer field be converted into a makeshift rifle range. Live rounds now crisscrossed the airspace where soccer balls had once flown, and a series of dummies, caricatures of Japanese uniforms scrawled on their surfaces, stood in place of goalposts.

Blocking out the noise of the makeshift range, Astrid hefted the carbine, pressed the wooden stock against her shoulder, and gazed down the sights.

_Steady now. Safety off. Stance. Aim. _

Crack!

The butt kicked against her gaunt frame. Dirt cheap, weighing two and a half kilos and firing a reduced-power carbine cartridge, the select-fire carbine was manageable even in the hands of the most overburdened or least fit soldier – which was why tens of millions had been produced for the Provincial Militia and rear area troops.

But while the tallest girl in her class (no mean feat, considering that a good ten percent of her bilingual seventh grade class was also Anglo), Astrid was still a twelve-year old girl, with the build to match. She still marveled at how the sixth-graders - especially the pint-sized Han kids - handled their carbines at all.

She checked the dummy. A new scar graced its torso.

"Excellent shooting, Astrid. You must have some Viking blood in you. The blood of warriors."

Astrid turned to face the Headmistress, and blushed.

The Headmistress, a survivor of one major civil war, countless riots, and six influenza pandemics, smiled back at her blond-haired charge with a toothless grin. The 85-year old crone, who had come back to run the school after her successor had been called up for war work, had been the driving force behind the student rifle training program on the Wuhan school board.

Even as the rest of the board had wasted time arguing about the barbarity of using children in war and the horrible scars violence would leave on young psyches, she had charged ahead, "requisitioning" carbines, submachine guns, and lightweight disposable rocket launchers from Militia stocks while instilling (indoctrinating) her charges with the patriotic fervor and martial spirit necessary for Total Victory.

She continued smiling as Astrid sent more rounds downrange.

Astrid was precisely the kind of student she had wanted. Oh, if only there existed a whole army of Astrids with which the homeland could be defended!

Another young girl approached her, a letter clutched in her hands. The Headmistress's smile disappeared, replaced with a firm scowl. "Headmistress, my mother wants me to stop rifle training. She's afraid it'll make me act rashly when the Japanese come."

The Headmistress's scowl deepened. Even now, with half the country under Japanese occupation, clear evidence of Japanese mass atrocities from Beijing to Hefei, and Japanese tank armies bearing down on Wuhan, the feckless government was still faffing about with teaching children to hide and evacuate instead of handing out rifles and rocket launchers to every man, woman, and child! The ranks of the Provincial Militia, fifty million strong, were hardly adequate when over four hundred million Pacificans still lived free on the mainland!

Did they not understand the nature of the war their own country was embroiled in? This was no longer an age where soldiers and officials waged war while the peasantry got as far out of the way as possible! This was an age of mass war, of _Total War_!

"Tell your unpatriotic, lily-livered mother that she can come and tell me this herself! Until then, you will continue practicing with your carbine!" The Headmistress spat.

Astrid safed her weapon as she discreetly tilted her ear towards the Headmistress.

The Headmistress raised her voice loud enough for everyone to hear. "There is a war on! It is Total in character! Every free Pacifican is a part of the industrial war machine of our great Republic! Every citizen must work! Every citizen must fight!"

She began to pace. "I was six years old when the Taiping uprising swept through Wuhan! Back then, the Taipings made every one of us hold a spear – even me! We stabbed the Manchus and beat them back when they tried to retake Wuhan! And when the Joint Government came to liberate us, we stabbed them too until we realized that the Taipings had lied to us! Then we stabbed the deluded Taiping fanatics! I fought to defend our great nation from the ravages of barbarism! Now it is your turn!"

The frail woman picked up a carbine, and demonstratively fired a round downrange. "You youngsters have it lucky! I didn't even have shoes to wear! All I had was a sharpened bamboo stick! You have shoes, you have rifles, you even have antitank rockets! When the Japanese come, you will do your duty! If you are so unfortunate to have to die for your country, you will take at least one if them with you!"

=O=

Present day

_It's happening again. It's happening again and Hiccup is still screwing around. _

Toothless taxied to the runway in silence.

But this was not the silence of amity and anticipation of a few weeks earlier. This silence was oppressive, born of fear, of anger - anger at the Indians, at the risk of nuclear war. At that _idiot _sitting three feet behind her.

_Why? Why would he do this to me? Force me to choose between friends and social standing? Force me to reflect? To stop? Feel? Now?! _

Hiccup said nothing as the aircraft skidded to a halt at the end of the runway – not that he had said much for the past week. Good. Astrid's face wore a hard expression as she glared at the red runway light, daring it to turn green.

This wasn't a milk run - well, last time hadn't been a milk run either, but that particular route had been flown dozens of times, its SAM sites mapped, its radars characterized.

Today's route would take them over suspected missile bases in the very heart of India, over the floodplains of the sacred Ganges, over the great stone palaces of the Deccan highlands.

Astrid tensed as she remembered the carefully plotted route - and the angry red overlapping circles of radar, SAM, and fighter bases between which it wove. And those were just the units satellite reconnaissance had identified.

They were heading off into the unknown.

_We call on the Republic of India not to interfere with these peaceful unarmed reconnaissance flights, which are necessary for the security and peace of mind of the people of the Joint Government of the Pacific… _

Astrid scoffed as the words of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs bubbled to the surface of her consciousness. There was no way the Indians would not shoot at them. Heck, if their positions were reversed, she'd shoot at her.

Hiccup spoke. _Great._ "Uhh… Astrid… I'm still very sorry about the whole mess. I… hope we can handle this… professionally."

The light turned green. Astrid angrily shoved the throttle forward, and Toothless shot off the runway into the predawn sky.

Her weapons systems officer (WSO) spoke. "Heading 275. On course for reference point one." Hiccup felt the compulsion to keep talking. "I reverted to old habits. And I lost objectivity."

But if the risks were great, so was the necessity. The Soviets had proven too adept at evading, deceiving, manipulating satellite surveillance. Worse, scuttlebutt had it that the brass had lost a few critical low-orbit recon birds in the aftermath of the Indian test, and that at least one station had lost its entire stock of film to radiation damage.

Strategic nuclear war was in the cards, and the flyboys needed to know where to shoot to blast those missiles into radioactive scrap before they could be launched.

"Copy, WSO. On course, 275. Hiccup: do your job."

Good. Compartmentalized. Just like any well-designed ship or aircraft.

Hiccup sighed. "Astrid, please…"

"Coming up on reference point one in five minutes! Just do your job like you agreed you would on day one! For your country!" Astrid snapped.

"For me." She whispered.

_Sometimes, I don't even know who you are. _Hiccup inhaled sharply. "Reference point one, change heading to 180. Initiate turn in 240 and counting."

Astrid's eyes narrowed as they barrelled towards the Nepalese border, and sovereign Indian airspace beyond. _Okay, India. Let's see what you've got. _

=O=

Toothless heard the radars even before they hit the Indian border. Even as the shrieks and chitters of Fan Song and Spoon Rest SA-2 radars echoed across the Himalayas, Hiccup kept a steady gaze on his threat board, on the lookout for the low growl of the SA-5 Gammon – the only weapon available to the Indians that could reliably shoot down stratospheric supersonic aircraft.

Hiccup frowned as they zipped into Indian airspace. "This… wasn't here three weeks ago. I'm picking up at least half a dozen Fan Songs covering the entire Ganges valley. Oh, boy. SA-6 radars. The flyboys are going to have a tough time ahead of them."

Mounted on a tracked chassis, the SA-6 was a highly mobile medium-range SAM system, designed to kill transsonic aircraft at medium and low altitudes. Deadly against TAC's fighter-bombers, but about as useful as a thrown rock against supersonic aircraft at 60,000 feet.

Toothless whimpered as the torrent of electronic noise intensified. Hiccup deftly adjusted the EW suite, blocking out the least important signals and allowing him to concentrate on the main threats. The growl of a Gammon search radar finally came into focus.

Astrid kept a keen eye on her own instruments. _Stay on target._

"Uhh… Astrid… none of this was on our mission plot." Hiccup's mouth went dry as he contemplated calling an abort.

_No. Far better to stare death in the eye than face Astrid's wrath. _

Astrid grunted. "No kidding. Ballistic missile sites weren't on those charts either. This is our _job_, Hiccup. Maintain EMCON. That radar stays off until objective point one."

Crap. She'd heard the fear, the _doubt, _that had crept into his voice.

Far below, as it had for millennia, the holy Ganges flowed leisurely by, ignorant and uncaring of the vast leaps in technology, in industry, in social organization, that had taken hold amongst the species of small-jawed, big-brained hairless bipedal apes that had bathed in its cool waters since time immemorial.

_Should not have read that travel guide last week. _

Even as his sonic boom echoed across the landscape and his turbojets blazed a brilliant plume across the heavens, Toothless stayed whisper silent, emitting not a pipsqueak in the far more important realm of microwaves and radio. While in no way a "stealthy" aircraft, the F-12B had been designed for somewhat reduced visibility on radar, with canted tails, radar-absorbing coatings on specific surfaces, and even injectors for special additives to the otherwise highly detectable exhaust trail. Between these measures, supersonic speed, radio silence, and careful route planning to stay far away from radars, Toothless could _in theory _stay hidden – for a short while.

Hiccup's heart seemed to fall into his stomach as his threat board lit up. "MiG radars. Four Gammons. Another dozen Guideline radars. Dead ahead. This… is pretty much the densest air defense network anyone's ever seen in South Asia."

Astrid's voice was a whisper. "What are they protecting?"

"Probably missile dispersal fields." Hiccup shrugged. "But that's what we're here to find out, right?"

New search radars sprang to life, and the chitters around them changed subtly as microwave beams swung across the sky. "Okay. They see us. Dun-dun-dun, we're dead."

Somewhere in this electronic maelstrom, Hiccup knew, were orders – orders to air defense batteries, interceptor squadrons. Orders to shoot down the interloper zipping through the sacred airspace of India, orders to lay traps, to block off likely flight paths and escape routes. To corral the enemy into kill zones… and kill them.

"Astrid, adjust heading 145, hold at 60,000 feet." Hiccup was pressed into his seat as Astrid gave the pre-identified overlapping SA-5 sites a wide berth – but one just within the range of the big synthetic aperture radar in Toothless's weapons bays. "Radar on."

Sure enough, the growl of the Gammon search radar soon became oppressive. Hiccup kept a wary eye on his left even as Toothless dutifully kept his ears open.

"So far, so good." Hiccup noted.

A Gammon fire control radar roared to life.

"Spoke too soon, Hiccup." Astrid opened the throttle, and Toothless purred amicably as the jet pitched gently skyward and climbed effortlessly into the stratosphere.

SA-2 fire control radars screeched, adding their cacophony to the roaring Gammon radars. Hiccup's threat board was afire with lights as harsh microwave beams chased Toothless across the sky.

"Missile launch signal! Infrared on! Got 'em! One and four o'clock! Four SAMs in the air!"

Taking a turn now would probably throw any missile off their tail. But to so would mean abandoning their mission – leaving critical areas of the Indian heartland un-reconnoitered, unsearched for nuclear missiles. It would mean coming back for another round against the enemy – worse, sending one of their squadron-mates up against these defenses.

And Astrid would kill him.

He gritted his teeth. They could probably make it. "Hold steady, Astrid. ECM on. Evasive maneuvers."

Hiccup twisted a knob, and Toothless gave off a mighty roar, unleashing a barrage of noise at the incoming missiles, drowning out their command signals and confusing their insectlike electronic brains. Yet more noise escaped to the ground far below, where radar operators looked on in shock as their systems went blind, or began seeing double, triple, quadruple.

Astrid pitched the jet back down, and the mach indicator ticked upward even as the earth screamed towards them. The missiles, aimed too high and too far behind, seemed to implode in Toothless's wake.

"More fire control radars. One o'clock."

Missile contrails seemed to mark Toothless's path across the sky as the supersonic aircraft bobbed gently up and down – a majestically twirling, locomotive-sized bullet, hiding amongst clouds of electronic ghosts and banal noise.

They passed the Deccan, a highland of ancient kilometer-thick lava flows and ash banks, ejecta from a long-dead supervolcano that had once smothered the subcontinent in lava. Astrid maneuvered Toothless around a stately preplanned turn. Hiccup took a sip of water from his water bag, and deftly gave his nose a scratch with the straw.

Out of the darkness came the roar of three Gammon fire control radars – from all points of the compass.

"One, two, and ten o'clock! Six SAMs in the air!"

_SAM trap. _Astrid gulped, and nudged Toothless upward just a bit more. _Come on, boy. You can do this. _

"Eight SAMs in the air! Holy cow… they're trying to box us in." Hiccup's eyes flitted to his navigation chart, their flight plan, and the inviting expanse of friendly ocean just five hundred kilometers east. _No. _

A _fourth _Gammon fire control radar roared to life. "Ten SAMs. Astrid, we're boxed in."

Astrid rechecked the inlet temperatures even as Toothless, inlet spikes fully retracted, screamed across the sky at 90,000 feet and Mach 3.6, nearly twice as fast as a bullet from a rifle. _The engines won't take it. They'll overheat. _

The first pair of SAMs broke 60,000 feet, closing with Toothless at Mach 8.

Hiccup looked on in horror at the rapidly growing dots on his infrared screen. He didn't have ranging data, but the missiles were closing, and closing fast. "Roll on my mark, Astrid! Three.. two… one… mark!"

Astrid yanked the stick, and Hiccup braced himself as Toothless began to slowly roll, plummetting as the aircraft traded altitude for speed without a single degree of change in heading. Astrid eyed the throttle as the engines heated further in the thickening air.

The star-studded sky gave way to the poorly-industrialized Deccan, an empty, uninviting black expanse that seemed ready to swallow them whole.

The dots on his scope twisted wildly as they burned towards them. _Come on. Come on. Come on…_

Seemingly diminutive puffs of smoke and fire erupted all around them as missile warheads – big enough to sink a warship – detonated on command, sending vast clouds of razor-sharp debris screaming across the sky like murderous hypersonic confetti cannons.

A bang rocketed through Toothless, and Hiccup's hands flew across his station as the master alarm blared to life. Astrid tensed, feeling every flutter in her controls and every minute rumble in the airframe.

Toothless emerged from the roll, higher than before and not a knot slower.

"They missed. They missed! We had a puncture in tank six. It's sealed." Hiccup's voice was thick with relief.

Astrid eased the throttle back as she brought Toothless back into a comfortable performance band.

That was predictable. Big mistake.

"TURN! TURN! TURN!"

"What?" Astrid fumed.

"TURN, ASTRID!"

_Crap._ Astrid pulled hard on the stick, and took Toothless into a countrysized turn that pressed them both into their ejection seats.

"Radar on! Tracking!"

"What the heck, Hiccup?!" Astrid fumed as she contemplated the ruination of a near-perfect reconnaissance mission. At least the poor sod who would have to fly over the target again could fly a much shorter mission from the Bay of Bengal.

"New interceptor radar. Next-generation Soviet gear. Close!"

_Radar warning. Unidentified fighter radar. Strong. Too strong – too close. Rumors of a new superfighter with missiles powerful enough to shoot us down with a radar in that band. We're being intercepted! _Hiccup's hands shook as the moment replayed in his head, over and over…

"What radar, Hiccup?! What new Soviet gear?" The grinding of Astrid's teeth was audible over the intercom.

Hiccup hesitated. "They… said the Soviets were making a new fighter with a radar in that band. It was… close! That kind of signal strength…"

Astrid's jaw dropped. "Who said, Hiccup? Who said it?"

Hiccup's eyes widened as he realized the magnitude of his mistake. "A… friend of mine. And a few scattered reports in the EW journals. And everybody knows the Soviets have a new jet in the pipeline…"

Astrid gritted her teeth. "You had us lose an objective because of _hearsay_? Rumors and speculation?!"

"It… it was an educated guess. We… we can review the radar tape…" Hiccup stammered.

Astrid shook her head. "Nope. That doesn't change anything. We ran into an undefined threat. And you panicked and let your… fascination with new technology and fear of the unknown compromise your judgement! Not every new radar is a superfighter, Hiccup!"

"It's called initiative, Astrid! This could be useful…" Hiccup refused to budge.

She snorted. "It doesn't matter what actually took a potshot at us! You screwed up!"

Hiccup inhaled sharply. "No! You screwed up, Astrid! I have the threat picture! You don't! You can book me for poor judgment all you want, but you _really_ need to evade when I tell you! Or we can't do our jobs!"

"Well, you…"

Hiccup's threat board lit up. "Not now, Astrid! Air search radar, one o'clock!" Hiccup took a gander at his map.

They were feet wet, heading over the Bay of Bengal. "Crap. One of ours! IFF's on. Tiara, come in. Tiara, come in…"

Astrid stared out her window as Hiccup tried to establish contact with the Navy. She'd hesitated. Damnit, she'd hesitated. They needed to fly as a team to pull this off, and she'd hesitated.

"Astrid, we have contact with Tiara. Search radar on." Hiccup chuckled.

Hiccup turned on his search radar, even as he examined his board.

Scores of dots bobbled on the moonlit waters of the Indian Ocean, spread across hundreds of miles. Some were obviously warships – the super-powerful air search radar of the big air defense cruiser that had caught his attention could not be mistaken for anything else.

Four other dots blared with common air search radars, used on virtually every ship in the Navy – from aircraft carriers to corvettes. Hundreds more stayed silent, or emitted commercial surface search radars – _also _installed on every ship in the Navy. If any of the ships turned off their radars, it would join the silent mass.

The vast commercial traffic headed for the straits of Malacca and the ports of Southeast Asia, swarms of fishing vessels scouring precious protein from the rich waters of the Indian Ocean, and the warships and supply ships of the Joint Government Fifth Fleet all blended together into an amorphous mess, leaving any potential attacker bereft of targets.

Such was the beauty of naval warfare. As it turns out, on the timescales relevant to modern warfare, you _can _hide a ninety-thousand-tonne aircraft carrier.

High above the armada, a veritable swarm of turboprop-powered patrol aircraft buzzed, identifying ships by the bushel and tracking the Indian Navy's carriers as they put to sea. Navy helicopters flitted between destroyer escorts and Soviet bloc ships headed for Indian ports, boarding and inspection teams at the ready, allowing a score of ships to exercise effective control over thousands of kilometers of open water, from the Red Sea to the Bay of Bengal.

The flimsiness of the helicopters, turboprop-powered slow patrol planes, and little destroyer escorts – each of which could have been sunk by a single well-armed Indian missile boat or fighter aircraft – was immaterial. For behind them lay the might of three powerful carrier battle groups, capable of crushing virtually any threat – even India's ex-British surface force – that threatened the integrity of the blockade.

Toothless warbled in alarm as a vigilant sentinel of that force – a turboprop-powered Hawkeye radar plane – illuminated them suspiciously with its search radar. Hiccup switched his radar to air search, catching a glimpse of a pair of naval interceptors, tracing lazy circles on outstretched wings, ready to pounce.

Hiccup shook his head. "It's a madhouse down there. Navy's busy."

Astrid didn't reply.

Apart from banal instructions, the rest of the flight was conducted in complete silence.

Good.

_=O=_

_Author's note: I wrote most of the Astrid segments in December; again, before the outbreak. Historically, major pandemics, often of influenza, have happened every decade or so, give or take a decade, for the past century, occasionally with greater loss of life and more suffering than usual._


	24. Large Compound Escalation

Thanks to CajunBear73, OechsnerC, and everyone else for your reviews and input.

=O=

Chapter 24: Large Compound Escalation

Wenchang Launch Center

Hainan Province, Joint Government of the Pacific

Drago Bludvist raised his ice-cold Coke to his lips, basking in the warm subtropical sunshine. The white metal bleachers of the viewing stand, warmed uncomfortably by the sun, brought back memories of high school football games long past to the hulking former linebacker.

He turned a corner of his lips. In some way, perhaps, he was watching a game. A game played across continents, by teams a billion to a side, with the world hanging on to every play.

Drago inhaled deeply, enjoying the concoction of sea salt, jungle, and kerosene that filled the breeze. He would tire of the humidity, heat, and mosquitoes eventually, but for now, the five-star beachfront resorts were a welcome change from the desolate Qingzang Plateau.

On the horizon, the glittering waters of the South China Sea lapped at the white sandy beaches of Hainan Island. Scattered palm trees, marshes, and patches of jungle dotted the vast coastal plain.

Crisscrossing the plain were huge concrete causeways, connecting towering fifty-story Vehicle Assembly Buildings with skeletal launch towers and monolithic concrete launch pads. Kilometers of marsh separated the superhardened launch pads, ensuring an explosion of a rocket filled with thousands of tonnes of fuel on one pad would not destroy its neighbors.

"Nice day for a launch, isn't it?"

Drago turned around. The National Security Advisor, her close-cropped black hair tied into a neat bun, took a seat next to him.

"Indeed, Dr. Song." He rasped. "The weather is... superb for recovery operations."

"A little on the sweltering side, though." The Advisor tugged on the collar of her business suit as Drago took another swig from his ice-cold Coke.

The General reached into his cooler, and handed the Advisor a glass bottle filled with cold, fizzy, liquid candy.

"Your reputation precedes you, doctor. I believe you will be… pleased to hear that your hypotheses… on limited nuclear scenarios are being taken into consideration by the planners at Strategic Air Command."

"I wouldn't put too much stock into them, General. Actual wars are going to be very context-dependent." The Advisor shrugged, and began to drink greedily from her bottle.

"Indeed. But planning for a limited nuclear war is in many ways more difficult than planning for a large one. It helps to be… able to achieve victory at every level of nuclear conflict." Drago grinned.

A seagull swooped down on the stand, inspecting it briefly before soaring into the clear blue sky.

"What… brings the National Security Advisor to a faraway launch site? Surely even this launch..." Drago gesticulated to the nearest pad. "…does not quite warrant a visit by a cabinet official."

"I had family business to attend to in Shanghai, and thought I'd drop by."

Drago raised an eyebrow. The powerful Song family was old money, with extensive interests in banking, industry, and the highest echelons of government.

"You missed the emergency cabinet meeting."

The Advisor nodded. "I wouldn't have been of any help. I've been in Europe for the past three weeks, locked in endless discussions with the Soviets even while the slimy bastards pulled their move in South Asia. Strategic _maskirovka _at its finest."

Drago nodded. The Russians, masters of military deception – _maskirovka _– had played a beautiful game. Between the mild ruckus in Europe, reductions in general rhetoric, border skirmishes, and the raid in Bhutan, they had kept all eyes away from the massive strategic buildup in the heart of India.

They had certainly succeeded in keeping one of the most powerful figures in the cabinet out of the loop. And for a politician, being out of the loop was simply _unacceptable_.

"So… do you wish me to… personally update you on the situation?" Drago probed.

"No, General. I can read just fine. It is the situation that concerns both of us." She paused. "The situation is exceedingly volatile. From… my long study of the questions of nuclear war, it is clear to me that nuclear war, when it starts, will be _kinetic_."

Drago scoffed. "I know my own war plans, Dr. Song. And I know how to fight a nuclear war."

The Single Integrated Operations Plan – the national nuclear war plans – hadn't been a single plan for years. Between increasingly good communications, long-range missiles with bigger memory rotors, and improving Soviet retaliatory capabilities, the war plan now encompassed a menu of limited, selective, and major attack options.

"Please, General, call me Janet. What I am here to discuss is a coordination issue."

Drago raised an eyebrow. The Advisor continued.

"My office wishes to provide you with up-to-date information on the political and diplomatic situation, on an ad-hoc basis, as it unfolds, so that you can modify your force posture accordingly. At the same time, we wish to know your force posture, so that we can better advise the President on the situation. Existing channels… will not give you the _context_ that we both know will be essential in any nuclear exchange."

Drago nodded. "I'm sure something can be arranged."

He contemplated asking whether the President had approved of the arrangement, but something in Janet's tone made him hold his tongue.

"Excellent." The Advisor nodded her head.

A loudspeaker blared to life. Drago watched as a set of huge telescopic cameras spun on their mountings, taking in the tropical paradise before settling on the launch pad.

Drago checked his watch. "It's starting."

In the distance, a booster stood erect, perched atop its superhardened launch pad. Gleaming silver triangular wings, horizontal stabilizers jutting from the wingtips, protruded from just above its rocket nozzles, right next to a pair of small jet engines. It was a flyback booster, capable of flying back to a runway for reuse after lofting its second stage into the thermosphere.

Drago raised his binoculars to his eyes. A stubby cylinder was piggybacked astride the booster, a rocket nozzle protruding from its rear. The payload, too large and heavy to fit in the bay of a reusable shuttle, was being launched on an expendable second stage.

Blue flames erupted from the nozzles, and the launch pad erupted in a vast torrent of steam as the sound suppression system went to work. Noiselessly, the three-thousand-tonne rocket ascended into the clear blue sky, the morning sun glinting off its titanium, heat-resistant wings.

A mighty, oppressive rumble finally echoed across the coastal plain, sending spectators scrambling to cover their ears.

Drago admired the faint blue glow of its engines – liquid hydrogen burns so hot it practically glows ultraviolet – as the booster tipped slightly, heading east to gain a kilometer per second of velocity from the Earth's spin.

Wild cheers erupted from the crowd, to which Drago added his own.

The Administration was addicted to half-measures and compromise. With access to the planning apparatus and intimate knowledge of the Administration's requirements, he could craft and present tailored options that would safeguard the interests of the nation – even if the Administration would have preferred less effectual ones.

In effect, the Advisor's offer would give him the chance to shape policy.

The booster disappeared from view. It had a long journey ahead of it - the physics package was headed halfway to the moon, safely beyond the bulk of the Van Allen radiation belts.

After all, where better to test a hundred-megaton, Belgium-incinerating nuclear bomb than the vast, empty expanse of High Earth Orbit?

=O=

"Until there is an immediate danger of atomic war, we must all continue about our daily lives. Our enemies would like nothing more than for us to leave our cities empty and unproductive. In this time of national emergency, our factories, homes and offices are posts of duty once more, not to be deserted. Production must continue if we are to win. With civil defense training, we shall fare much better than the citizens of the Imperial Japan when they faced atomic attack. This is a civil defense message…"

The jaunty titter of the TV roused Astrid from her stupor, and she dug into her meal with renewed gusto. _It's happening again. It's happening again and there's nothing I can do to stop it. _

_It's happening again and we're not in fighting trim. _

Ruffnut Thorsten slid into the chair opposite. Avoiding her gaze, Astrid lifted her bowl and chopsticks to her face, and continued to shovel rice, mincemeat, and tofu into her mouth.

She put down the empty bowl. Ruffnut was still staring at her expectantly. Astrid sighed. "Don't you have something more important to do?"

Between mission planning, training, and patrols, everyone had been swamped all week.

"More important than trying to help a friend out?" She glanced around the room. "Where's Hiccup? With your bird?"

"Don't know, don't care."

Ruffnut tilted her head. "My brother told me what happened."

"So it's gotten all the way over to TAC." Astrid growled.

"Hey, one of the goals of joint exercises is improving communications." Ruffnut chuckled. "And how could it not? There aren't that many people on-base with four kills, you know." She grimaced. "Plus… everyone likes a good soap opera."

Astrid groaned. "Great. A fricckin' _soap opera._ Now, instead of just worrying about getting blasted out of the sky, I get to worry about my reputation, my colleagues, and my goddamned career!"

Ruffnut shook her head. "You two have been talked about ever since I got here – nothing much came out of it. But right now, you're making it worse. You're actively avoiding Hiccup now. That looks suspiciously like a falling-out and makes your CO worry about readiness – which is all they ever care about around here."

"Your brother tell you that too?" Astrid glared.

"No, Fishlegs – you know, my backseater - has a friend in your squadron."

"Oh."

Ruffnut searched Astrid's face for a reaction. True to form, there was none. "So… since I guess the _best_ response to this mess is to act normal, and since I know you're smart enough to figure _that _out… there's more to this than just the embarrassment, isn't there?"

Astrid buried her face in her hands. "That's just it. I don't have the time to…"

"Make time." Ruffnut crossed her arms. "I'm skipping dinner to talk this over with you, you know."

"Great. Make me feel guilty so I talk about this."

"Is it working?"

Astrid paused.

"Okay. Hiccup… has a crush on me. That much is obvious."

Ruffnut drummed her fingers on the table. "It never got in the way of work before."

Astrid shook her head. "No. Hiccup does a very good job… most of the time. And tries to keep things professional. And he tries very hard to care. And he's… easy to trust. And he tried to improve. Then he made a fresh mess."

She winced as she remembered how the squadron CO had congratulated them on being the first aircrew to encounter and characterize the new Soviet interceptor. Hiccup had been right.

But so had she. The new MiG didn't appear to be much more of a threat to them than one of the Navy's new interceptors. It was something to worry about, sure, but it had nowhere near the performance of her Blackbird.

"Hiccup screwed up, caused problems. What else is new?"

Astrid's face scrunched up in thought.

"He's… still trying to be too nice. Even with all this going on." She gestured around the Officer's Club.

Ruffnut leaned forward. This was getting good. "So he made another move, then."

"Another?"

"Well, I presume your trip to Atomland wasn't _exactly _professional." Ruffnut rolled her eyes.

Astrid nodded. "It was a lot of fun, actually. He wanted me to go to dinner at the big restaurant in town."

"That actually sounds… less of a _thing_ than a trip to an amusement park. So… besides Snotlout screaming it to the rooftops, what was different?"

Astrid recoiled at the thought. "There was a national emergency in progress. I needed to focus. Getting into…"

_Say it. Say it. _

"…a relationship could have… would have impaired my performance. I didn't want to have to think about it. I didn't want to have to choose between_ focus_ and… a relationship."

"Readiness isn't better when the aircrew are actively avoiding each other either. So there was a lot to think about." Ruffnut nodded sagely.

"Yeah… I guess." Astrid's voice fell.

Ruffnut sighed. "I take it you didn't really explain it to him, or flat-out say no, didn't you."

"It would have made me… think about it. I guess. I… didn't want to flat out say no." Astrid's throat went dry. Darnit, she was thinking about it now.

"And, knowing Hiccup, do you think he can figure out exactly what you're thinking?"

"No." Astrid noted sheepishly.

"So the solution to this would be…" Ruffnut began.

"…to go talk to him. Explicitly and clearly tell him to give me space and time, and _then_ shove it back to the back of my head like always. That sounds really stupid, Ruffnut."

"It can't be any stupider than avoiding your backseater with a shooting war around the corner." Ruffnut insisted.

Astrid groaned. "Okay. You got me. I'll talk to him."

"Atta girl!" Ruffnut smacked the table. "Hey! Bartender! Two cokes, please!"

She turned around. Astrid was already gone. "Uhh… one coke, please."

=O=

Astrid found Hiccup's car behind the little knoll east of the base. Partially sheltered from the lights of Berk, and far from any other major settlement, the stars burned brilliantly high above.

She stopped some distance away, killed her headlights, and pulled her parka in a little tighter against the cold, dry, wind of the Qingzang Plateau.

Guided by the light of the half-moon, she walked up to Hiccup, the gravelly soil cruching beneath her boots.

Hiccup was watching the sky intently through a pair of binoculars.

"Got an extra pair of those?" Astrid tried to smile.

Hiccup turned around, startled. "Astrid? What are you doing out here?"

"What are _you_ doing out here?"

"Taking a break. Gobber's covering for me back at the hangar, and this is technically an extended dinner break." He pointed to the remains of a sandwich on the hood of his car. "What, is _this _extravagant for a national emergency?"

_Actually, yes. _Astrid held her tongue.

"Okay, Astrid. Just wait a few more minutes, and I'll get back to work. I've got an extra pair of binoculars in the car."

Astrid took a position next to Hiccup, and scanned the night sky as Hiccup guided her through a constellation.

"…and that's where we need to be looking for the next… maybe five minutes. Then it's back to work."

Astrid took a deep breath. "Hiccup, I'm… sorry for my… attitude this past week. I mean, you were being a moron, but that much hostility… was uncalled for. It's just that your actions inadvertently… caused me to reflect on our… working relationship. And I don't want to think about it. I need to focus. We both need to focus."

"…for the duration of the national emergency, am I right?" Hiccup deadpanned.

"Exactly. Can we just… forget about it all for a month or two? Go back a little?"

Hiccup sighed.

"Maybe… once we gain a little more time… and freedom… to think it over… I might want to. But until then, I miss our… working relationship. And not just because it'll let us survive this."

Hiccup didn't quite know what to say, and so decided on silence.

"I had a lot of fun at Atomland. And I'd be more than grateful if you could arrange… similar activities… after this crisis resolves. But right now, I need space and time."

Hiccup sighed. He'd waited years for a no. What were a few more months of maybe? "Okay, Astrid. Status quo ante, stick to the job, put it behind us. I trust you."

Eh. If they didn't patch this up now, his heart had a fair chance of getting literally broken by SAM shrapnel, instead of just getting broken metaphorically. Might as well.

"Thanks, Hiccup."

They both gazed intently at a particular spot in the sky. "Hiccup, what exactly are we…"

"Shhhh. Don't blink."

For an instant, a brilliant white star appeared in the sky, before disappearing in a flash.

"Yes! Astrid, did you see that?"

Astrid nodded. "What the heck was that?"

"Deep space nuclear test. They didn't really publicize it, but they notified everyone to keep space traffic out of the x-ray flash zone. Media didn't catch on, but you bet we did."

He waved his copy of the amateur astronomy newsletter in her face. "One hundred megatons in a physics package massing under ten tonnes – the best yield-per-weight ever. Teller's really outdone himself on this one. They're saying the blasted thing's too big to fit in any missile or bomber, though."

"It's nice, I guess."

"Fifty times more kaboom than the Indian test, and twice the yield of the biggest Soviet nuclear test ever. Although the Soviets insist that their bomb could go up to 150 megatons. What a way to one-up the Soviets."

Astrid frowned. "Still not as impressive as the aurorae from the Indian test."

"Say what you want, but hundred-megaton weapons open up entirely new ways to attack the Soviet arsenal. We might even be able to burn down whole forests the size of Belgium with these things, or empty seas of submarines. No more hiding in the woods for Soviet armies. And then we have the meteorite defense applications…"

"Or they'll just be utterly useless vanity weapons."

"Either way, it's a pretty good cap to our test series." Hiccup strode over to his car as Astrid handed him his binoculars.

Astrid nodded. "Well, let's hope the Indians found it scary enough to back off. The ultimatum expires tomorrow."

Astrid took a look at her watch. It was past midnight. She chuckled softly. "Today. It expires today."

=O=


	25. Dramatic Military Confrontation

Thanks to Storylist, CajunBear73, OechsnerC, Atomicsub927, and everyone else for their reviews and commentary.

=O=

Chapter 25: Dramatic Military Confrontation

Stoick inhaled sharply as he examined the massive situation map on the wall.

A large, curved, dotted line, bowing south, divided the Joint Government to the north and India to the south, with Bhutan and Nepal squeezed in between. To the west lay West Pakistan, Kashmir, and the disputed Western Sector, to the east, Myanmar, East Pakistan, the disputed Eastern Sector, and Indian Assam, wedged uncomfortably between East Pakistan and Myanmar.

Southward of the line stretched the bulk of India, a blunt dagger thrust deep into the Indian Ocean, with the Bay of Bengal to its east and the Arabian Sea to its west. In the center of the subcontinent rose the highlands of the Deccan, ringed on all sides by plains dotted with bustling cities – coastal plains to the east and west, and the great floodplain of the Ganges to its north, separating the Deccan from the great mountain range of the Himalayas.

Northward of the border stretched the seemingly endless mountains of Tibet Province, interstate highways and railway lines linking its scattered towns and cities, set in valleys amongst towering mountains. Products of the inexorable eons-old movement of the Indian plate northward as it was swallowed under the mass of Asia at five millimetres a year, the vast tectonic crumple zone extended across Qinghai, and sent shockwaves across the landscape of Sichuan, Yunnan, and South-east Asia, creating lands of hilly jungle enterprising apes had subsequently covered in terraced rice paddies.

Stoick shook his head, and turned his attention to the markers indicating the locations of his air forces. Across the length and breadth of this vast frontier, two thousand kilometers from Kashmir to Myanmar, scores of aircraft were continuously aloft. The patrolling jets formed a ballet of airpower, ever-shifting, ever-changing, sometimes feinting towards the audience for brief moments before withdrawing to the stage.

At a moment seemingly no different from any other, the ballet would transiently assume a perfect attack configuration – and pounce across the length and breadth of India, hopefully upon an audience desensitized and unalert from a week of watching continuous air operations.

He smiled as a staff officer placed a flurry of fresh markers on his board. The ballet of airpower had just received a fresh injection of machines, even as a dozen aircraft turned around upon hitting the Indian border, just waiting for orders to turn right back around and head straight for central India.

More markers appeared offshore – Navy strike packages, headed for Indian naval and coastal targets. Multiple Soviet cargo ships had maneuvered evasively when asked to heave to for helicopters to drop off inspectors. They would not evade Navy strike aircraft, or their laser-guided bombs.

Simultaneously, even as ground forces applied pressure across the frontiers, the Airborne would land in the Indian rear, cutting off the disputed territories from reinforcements. Artillery and airpower would do the rest.

The moment of perfection was fast approaching.

Stoick was tense with anticipation. He thought of the latest revisions to the plans, and shrugged. He was as ready as his years of training, experience, and hard work could have made him. His stomach wasn't aching, but the butterflies that came with being responsible for the fate of over a hundred thousand men were as strong as ever.

He thought of his bottle of antacids, in the drawer under his desk next to a dusty picture of Valka and Hiccup.

Nope. His stomach felt fine. He wouldn't need them tonight.

He glanced at the command phone. If the call hadn't come through to cancel by now, it probably wouldn't come at all.

The ultimatum had expired five hours ago. Operation Avalanche was now as unstoppable as its namesake.

Well, politically, at least. The gears of war, already greased by years of high tensions, had been kicked into overdrive by the nationwide panic over the Soviet-Indian nuclear test. The papers decried the complete failure of the Administration's foreign policy while fanning the flames of fear. Voices in Congress were calling for immediate preemptive nuclear strikes, for an inquiry into the Administration's handling of the crisis, even – in hushed whispers – for impeachment. The Administration's nominal supporters were barely holding the line, and by all accounts were asking pointed questions themselves. With Indian intransigence clear, Avalanche was going ahead, and damn the torpedoes.

Militarily, if the Indians stuck to conventional arms, Stoick was confident – certain, even - that he could accomplish his mission with under ten thousand casualties.

Of course, a few dozen well-placed nuclear strikes would stop his forces dead in their tracks and annihilate his airpower.

He was not alone in his assessment.

=O=

Admiral Yeung walked up to the SAC general, his expression grim. It was one thing to be conservative with naval forces, and another to chicken out on the eve of battle. But needing to beg for help from the Strategic Air Command – the service that had held up carrier construction for a decade to pay for its pet bombers… well, that was another thing altogether.

General Bludvist smiled insincerely as the Admiral approached. Did he know?

For a moment, the Admiral pondered withdrawing his request, and sticking to the original plan – the one that called for his carriers to continue to fight in the event of escalation to nuclear hostilities in India.

But then he pictured Saratoga, her flat top swept clean of aircraft, her broken island denuded of antennae, her skin charred black by thermonuclear heat, her sturdy, almost-battleship-like high-strength steel hull battered but afloat, her funnels still belching gently…

…even as thousands of men groaned, vomited, and died within her, radiation casualties all.

A floating tomb of a flattop, never to fight again. _Scratched_.

He swallowed his pride. "General Bludvist. I am here to communicate a change in our tactical nuclear contingency planning. The Navy has reviewed the tactical situation… and has decided that, if conditions hold, it can no longer commit naval aviation assets to offensive operations in the event of widespread tactical nuclear weapons use."

He awaited the SAC general's inevitable mockery, and his face burned with shame. For all its talk of conventional and sub-crisis utility, the Navy had, on the eve of battle, been forced to face facts.

Its beloved carriers were indeed obsolete in the nuclear age, regardless of how many nuclear freefall bombs they hung on the attack jets.

At least the submarine force would be safe from the budget shifts that were sure to come, if the war went nuclear. The Admiral prayed it wouldn't.

Drago nodded, his grin never leaving his face. "So… you wish for us to exclude the Navy from all tactical nuclear contingency plans?"

The Admiral nodded. "Yes, General Bludvist. I have our target lists and relevant planning documents right here." One of his staff officers stepped forward, a large box in his hands. "The Navy… regrets that it will be unable to participate, but believes that your command has the necessary forces to cover these targets."

While some criticized the relatively inflexible nature of nuclear war plans, the fact of the matter was that nuclear wars – even tactical nuclear wars – would unfold very, very quickly, as vast forces were consumed in nuclear fireballs and supersonic aircraft streaked across the sky. The timeframes in question were completely inadequate for on-the-spot planning. Better to have overly-rigid plans ready to go than have perfect plans that only materialized after the relevant weapons systems were smoking craters.

The SAC general tilted his head, puzzled. "Of course. But… I have a question. Doesn't the Navy train for nuclear war? I… was under the impression your big… expensive… carriers would have a better go of it than our airbases. They can… at least run and hide."

The Admiral grimaced. "Between, tactics, defensive countermeasures, and a little armor, a carrier has a good chance of avoiding being tracked even if it gets spotted, and a good chance of surviving a massed non-nuclear attack even if it gets tracked."

"So don't get spotted. Hide, as you usually do." The SAC officer prompted.

"Spotting a carrier is a helluva lot easier – and happens a lot more often - than tracking a carrier. In nuclear war, if you get spotted, you get nuked. Getting spotted often boils down to pure luck, and I sure as hell ain't gonna bet the lives of thousands of men and an irreplaceable billion-dollar national asset on _luck_."

_Especially when the Air Force can do the job just as well, but I sure as hell ain't gonna say that. _

"Nukes ruin all our naval counters. Evading or attacking the enemy while they prepare a strike package? Who cares?! The scout plane had a nuke on it, and you're dead. Decoys? Still dead even if it hits a kilometer away. Armor? You're kidding me. An airbase is at least more spread-out, and has more dirt to protect airplanes. Ships are… flimsy. A ship's a fool to fight a fort, remember?"

Drago smirked. "So… what you're saying… is that the surface Navy can't fight a nuclear war."

"No. I'm saying the surface Navy suffers from many disadvantages when fighting a nuclear war, and that the necessity of preserving the carrier force for subsequent stages of this conflict far outweighs the risk of sending them into an unprofitable situation, especially when Air Force assets are available."

Drago nodded knowingly. "Of course you are, Admiral." His grin stretched from ear to ear.

Admiral Yeung harrumphed. "Thank you for your understanding, General. I'll leave my aide to handle the details." He managed to crack a smile. "Unlike you, General, I have a war to fight."

Drago's grin did not let up. "We'll see, Admiral. We'll see."

=O=

The Soviet Major walked nervously in the dark, the leaves of the mountain forest scrunching under his boots. He arrived at the first of his missile batteries.

Covered in camouflage netting to lessen the effectiveness of Pacifican TV-guided bombs, and surrounded by earthen berms to render a near-miss ineffective, the giant SS-4 long-range missiles looked extremely impressive, even by red torchlight.

Sounds of shouting emerged from the nearest hide, and the Major hurried to break up the altercation.

Everyone had been on high alert since the Pacifican blockade, and nerves were frayed everywhere. The Major sighed as he reminisced about the euphoric first days after they had unveiled their arsenal. The glory of the stunning coup of Operation Anadyr had worn off as the capitalist response escalated, but the Major still took solace in the fact that the Pacificans would not dare widen its war aims while his weapons still defended India.

He stopped his defeatist thoughts in their tracks. Surely there would be more such glorious days to come. By properly planning economies instead of wasting energy in meaningless competition, socialism, was destined to triumph over capitalism. It was scientifically proven, even. Military conflict was just a symptom of the underlying ideological-economic struggle; therefore, as Socialism gained the upper hand in the economic sphere, Socialist military victories would follow suit. By the time of the new millennium, he was sure, Socialism would surely be dominant – and his leaders assured him that true Communism could be expected by that far-off date.

He shook his head, and headed into the hide.

An Indian technician was pointing and jeering at a pair of Soviet technicians, and the Indian translator had apparently taken a side.

"What is the meaning of this?" The Major asked.

The technician spoke. "The Indian here said that we should use the nuclear missiles to force the Pacificans to give up the blockade, and I called him a nincompoop, because nuclear war would kill us all."

The Indian translator spoke. "Your technician does not have socialist spirit! He cares nothing for the well-being of our nation even while the imperialists bully us."

The Major shook his head. "Now, now, everyone. We must all cooperate in the spirit of socialist brotherhood, and show ample respect for our Indian hosts."

He turned to the Indians. "World Socialism cannot flourish if the world is a radioactive charnel house. Our nuclear weapons are very dangerous, and cannot be used lightly. They are purely defensive weapons – not like the terribly offensive capitalist tactical bombs. Our mission is to protect the Indian nation from ultimate defeat – to deter the imperialists from causing unacceptable harm to your nation by giving you the means to strike back. For instance, we would strike if the capitalists tried to separate Assam from your great nation, or if they destroyed New Delhi. However, because the guiding lights of World Socialism are in our capitals, we must discipline ourselves, and only launch upon receiving lawful orders from both Moscow and New Delhi."

"Who are you to decide what constitutes unacceptable damage to India?!" The translator yelled.

"We are fraternal socialist allies. We care about each other. Remember what we have accomplished already!" The Major nodded. "Now, discipline yourselves. No more shouting matches! War is upon us."

A turbojet roared overhead, and everyone looked up.

=O=

_Not the most action-packed chapter, I know, but I felt that some sort of transition was necessary before the bullets start flying. _


	26. Large Conventional War

Thanks to CajunBear73, OechsnerC, and everyone else for their excellent commentary and reviews.

=O=

Chapter 26: Large Conventional War

"All flights, this is Mordor. _Hobbit, _I repeat, _Hobbit._"

In the cramped cockpit of her EF-4 Phantom Wild Weasel, Ruffnut Thorston shook herself awake. Behind her, Fishlegs Ingerman, her electronic warfare officer (EWO), did the same.

A hog of a fighter jet with two powerful turbojet engines, swept wings, and canted tailplanes, the Phantom epitomized the do-anything multirole fighter. The numerous variants of the fast jet could carry seven tonnes of bombs, dogfight MiGs, or, as in this case, kill enemy air defenses.

For the past week, Ruffnut and her EWO had flown endless sorties up and down the Indian-Pacifican border, a performer in a massive display of Pacifican airpower. The endless surges and withdraws had stretched even Ruffnut's nerves of steel to their limit.

Well, the wait was over. They were going to war.

"Altair, Vega, Rigel, Deneb. This is Sauron. Friendly RF-4s inbound 180/200 Bullseye. Do not engage."

Aww, what she'd have given to trade places with one of those RF-4s drivers! Burning over the treetops to snap pictures of SAMs and missiles while flak chased you across the sky – now that was a ride! If only that stupid flight line engineer hadn't recognized her in the other guy's uniform…

Eh, spilt milk. Her fun was about to start, and the adrenaline would be back the moment they started getting shot at.

Fishlegs spoke into the comm. "Altair 2, 3, 4. This is Altair Lead. We hit the deck at reference point. Castor will take high." He fiddled with the controls. "Rigel, this is Altair Lead. We'll call in targets as we see 'em; until then, go for preassigned targets."

"Flights, this is Sauron. Be advised, we have multiple bandits…"

Fishlegs smiled, and checked his map. This was a lot easier with Sauron around. The new AWACS birds rocked.

Hiccup's voice came in over the frequency. "Fishlegs… uh, Altair 1, this is Vega 5. We have top cover."

=O=

A hundred kilometers to the south, and twenty kilometers overhead, Toothless screamed across the sky, banging away at the earth and sky below with a powerful pulse doppler radar.

Dozens of dots crowded Hiccup's radar screen. Sauron, the big radar plane orbiting well inside friendly airspace, would tell him whether a plane was hostile or friendly if it came to it, but it was pretty clear that most of the southbound traffic – and there was a lot of it – was friendly.

Case in point was Snotlout – well, Vega 6, trailing Toothless by one hundred and fifty kilometers. To either side of them, along the length of the mighty Ganges, a half-dozen Blackbirds flew line abrest, sweeping southward to clear the skies for the strike packages behind them. To their rear, a veritable horde of SAC bombers – lumbering B-52s, supersonic B-58s, and space-age B-70s - flew figure-eight orbits right alongside the slow jammer aircraft, tankers, drone controllers, AWACS, and various intelligence planes that rounded out an Air Force, waiting for the fighters to clear out the worst of the Indian air defenses before beginning their runs.

The Blackbirds left scores of dots in the dust as they plowed ahead of the southbound strike packages. The fast jets below kissed the speed of sound as they hurtled across the continent, but for Hiccup and Astrid, they might as well have been parked on a tarmac. With so much going on below them, Hiccup felt as if he were a knight on horseback, lance held high, charging across a battlefield amidst a sea of footmen.

_Watch out for longbows, then. _

They had been thoroughly briefed on the target. They were headed back for the densest concentration of air defenses in South Asia – the missile complex the intelligence boys were calling "the Nest",

Last time they had been here, they'd been run out of town by enemy SAMs, Toothless had taken a shrapnel hit, and Astrid had almost, but not quite, bitten his head off.

While Hughes had developed an anti-radiation missile (ARM, a missile that homed in on radars to detroy them) for the Blackbird, the modified Falcon missiles were in limited supply, and since the Air Force was moving in with a series of large strike packages escorted by Wild Weasel anyway, Hiccup and Astrid had been assigned to kill enemy aircraft instead.

The call for targets went out, and Toothless turned his steely microwave gaze upon the nearest MiG.

"And… we have target lock. Fox three!"

A Falcon burned away from Toothless, and pounced upon a hapless MiG below.

Toothless's radar warning receiver warbled as SAMs reached skyward. "Astrid, SA-5 Gammons! 11 o'clock, extreme range!"

Astrid took Toothless into a gentle turn, keeping the MiGs well within her radar envelope. The SAMs tried to chase the aircraft across the sky, but failed to keep up with the turn.

On his radar, the target – Bravo-13 – had gone into a steep climb, forcing the missile to expend energy to track it.

_Well, this does not bode well._

At the last possible moment, the MiG dove sharply. The unwieldy Falcon, designed to destroy ungainly bombers with a nuclear warhead, failed to keep up with the MiG, and missed.

Hiccup gritted his teeth. The enemy had already devised tactics against them. The optimistic engagement envelopes would need to be tightened sharply. "Vega 6, this one's yours." He switched to the package frequency. "All flights, MiGs are implementing evasive maneuvers. Launch two missiles, about forty seconds apart. Maneuver for a tail kill if possible, and close on target before weapons release. He's evading because he can either see the missile coming, or because he's timing us. I don't think they have the radar warning gear to track the active homing, but I wouldn't bet my life on it."

Snotlout, bypassing his backseater, scoffed. "The bandit's betting _his_ life on it, not us. We can just sit back and rack up the kills."

"Fox three!" Snotlout's backseater called out. "Fox three!"

SAM calls echoed across the heavens as SA-5 radars roared to life around them, mixed with a cacophony of Fox Threes as the Blackbirds went to work.

Behind them, the MiG climbed for altitude again, dipped down to dodge one missile… and ran straight into the second one before he had a chance to repeat the maneuver.

"Vega 5, this is Vega 6. Scratch one bandit."

Snotlout's voice came in over the comm. "Yeah, baby! One kill! That's one red star!"

Hiccup ignored him, and focused on a MiG, frantically circling a SAM site to protect himself from the Blackbirds. "Astrid, run Bravo-16 over. We need that guy gone for the Weasels to do their work, and I want that guy deep inside our kill basket."

"And the SAM?"

Hiccup smirked. "Launch and roll."

Astrid chuckled. "Told you it'd come in handy."

They bore down on Bravo-16 even as Toothless warbled in alarm. "Fox three!"

Far below, two missiles left their launcher, ditched their boosters, and climbed skywards at Mach 7.

Hiccup gulped. "Fox three!"

Astrid took Toothless into a gentle turning climb while breaking into a very slow barrel roll, taking care to keep the radar tracking window on target. Hiccup swore as the radar broke lock, and again as the MiG dodged the first missile.

The second missile just plain missed.

"Astrid, we missed… Dive! Dive! Dive!"

At Mach 3 and 80,000 feet, Toothless went into a stately descent.

The missiles, each the girth of a tree-trunk and heavier than an African elephant, charged past them, and seemed to implode in their supersonic wake.

They cleared the SAM site, shaking loose a second pair of desperately-aimed SA-2s with barely enough juice to break 90,000 feet as they went.

Astrid was panting. "That was too close. I… do not recommend pulling that trick again."

Hiccup frantically checked his radar screen. Far below their supersonic wake, MiGs lay decimated by volleys of Falcons, low on precious fuel from executing evasive maneuvers and scattered across the sky.

But they still prowled the airspace over India.

"Flight, this is Sauron. Enemy air defense is heading for Castor. Phase Two is a go."

Hiccup sighed with relief. 'Castor' was the decoy drones, flying at medium level to draw attention. The strike package, flying at treetop level, could theoretically avoid any surviving MiGs.

After all, MiGs didn't have anything approaching look-down shoot-down capability.

=O=

They were calling the complex "The Nest". Ruffnut groaned at the totally square name. Why not 'the Ring of Doom" or "Red Death"?! You know, cause it was Communist and deadly.

That last one had a nice ring to it.

A complex of 'maybe eighty' strategic nuclear missiles, scattered across a few thousand square miles of Indian countryside amidst rustic little farms and villages, the Nest was defended by a multilevel air defense grid. The centerpiece of this grid was six overlapping SA-5 long-range SAM sites, defending against supersonic threats from the stratosphere. Medium altitude threats would be handled by dozens of fixed and mobile medium-range missile sites, the latter constantly changing position to avoid destruction. And below them all were hundreds of anti-aircraft guns, ready to shred any aircraft that got too close. MiGs flew from a regional interceptor base, complicating the task of any attacker.

Sure, it _looked_ tough. But if a year of flying against the West Bengalis had taught her anything, Ruffnut knew that the Air Force could crack any defense. It was just a matter of, you know, how many lives, planes, and really expensive missiles you wanted to throw at it.

And smarts. Fishlegs would have added smarts, too.

It was just like taking down a giant monster. Take a good long look at it with satellites and recon birds, and figure out where all the eyes and ears and claws were. Then blind it by shooting at its eyes whenever they opened. While it's got its paws firmly clamped over its eyes, rush in, rip out the claws, gouge out the eyes, and gut the beast's exposed underbelly before the eyes and claws grow back. Because they always do.

Rinse and repeat as necessary.

They were flying smart this time. They really didn't need to dismember the entire nest – just knock down the big SA-5 Gammons and the interceptor base to give the supersonic bombers free reign over, like, all of India. Since airbases or ten-tonne liquid-fueled SAMs couldn't move or hide under a jungle or whatever, they were big targets.

Heck, in a nuclear war, they'd probably have thrown a few dozen nuclear missiles at the damned things just to be rid of them. But the Administration – as a pack of gutless squares was wont to do – hadn't let the Air Force use the _right _tools for the job.

So unto the breach they went once more.

"We are at reference point Charlie, and we are a go." Fishlegs pointed out.

Ruffnut grinned manically, tipped _Meatlug III_ over –Fishlegs had insisted on the name even after the Bengalis had shot two _Meatlugs_ from under them - and dove into the landscape of rolling hills and farms below her even as Fishlegs squealed like a little girl. The rest of Altair flight followed suit.

"WOO-HOO!" The hills and farms grew annoyingly large, and Ruffnut flattened out her Weasel. Startled water buffalo, denuded trees, and shredded roofs roared by her canopy at nine hundred kilometers an hour. Terrified Indian peasants ran hither and yon as four pairs of hot turbojets blasted jetwash just above the treetops, barreling across their peaceful little villages and farms like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Astride her, Altairs 2, 3, and 4 remained rock-steady, following her every move.

Ruffnut picked a river to follow, weaving between low rolling ridges to avoid SAM fire.

They'd be dead if they ran into a flak trap, but India was huge, and, as hard as they seemed to try, the Reds couldn't possibly build enough AA guns to cover everything.

"Nothing yet." Fishlegs reported boringly. _Meatlug III_, like all other Wild Weasels, was at its core a high-performance Phantom fighter jet, pimped out with the latest in electronic jammers, radar warning receivers, and other nerd gear, which Fishlegs insisted was necessary to kill SAMs and evade the few that got tossed their way.

"Oh. Castor's working. They've lighting up. Picking targets." Fishlegs got to work on his threat board.

Ruffnut sighed. In the good ol' days, they'd wave Meatlug in front of the radars and dodge. But nope, missiles had started getting too lethal for that to work well. Instead, Fishlegs's nerd squad had opted to fly in robot suicide planes. Flying enticingly above the strike package, the Lightning Bug drones would take the heat for them.

"Altair 2, Magnum! Missile away!" Altair 2 popped upwards, popped off a small anti-radiation missile (brevity code 'Magnum'), and ducked back down. "Scratch one emitter."

"Another one, zero-three-zero."

"Altair 2, Magnum!" Altair 2 took the shot again.

"Still emitting."

"Altair 4, Magnum!"

That seemed to work.

"Scratch two emitters."

Fishleg gasped, and Ruffnut glanced upward. High above her canopy, two… three… four… five… long smoke trails reached skywards, disappearing into a powder-blue sky. SA-5 Gammons, on their way to the stratosphere.

The Blackbirds looked busy, by the looks of it. She hoped Astrid would make it. It would be a crying shame to lose another friend.

They were in the Nest all right.

"Do we have Gammons to kill yet?" Ruffnut prodded.

"Vega lead, this is Altair lead, we are not picking up Gammon radars, I repeat, we are not…"

"Altair lead, this is Vega lead. We're out of position. Shifting to your six o' clock. Just pop up and kill on my mark. Crap. This is getting heavy…"

Another pair of white streaks reached skyward.

Fishlegs checked his map. "Uhh… Ruff? We passed one! Three o'clock, fifteen klicks. Radar's pointed the wrong way. Over the shoulder?" Fishlegs tensed.

"Yee-haw! Altair 2, cover! Legs, when I say shoot, shoot!" Ruffnut pondered the location, shrugged, and pulled Meatlug into a tight, eight-gee loop that squished them both against their ejection seats. "Now!"

"Magnum!" At apogee, with Meatlug momentarily pointed in the right direction, Fishlegs let loose an ARM, which arced high over the battlefield until it found the Gammon radar.

Another radar painted them, and ate another ARM from Altair 2.

The growl of Gammons finally rang true in their headsets, and a cacophony of Magnum calls filled the airwaves as Altair flight took their shots.

Fishlegs nodded in satisfaction as Gammon after Gammon went silent.

"Altair, this is Vega 2. Good work." There was a pause. "Vega 1 is down. Could you please check for chutes?"

Ruffnut scoffed. Who would survive ejecting at 70,000 feet and Mach 3?

"They're not emitting." Fishlegs searched his threat board for medium-range missiles.

"You think they caught on to the fact that we're using drones?"

Ruffnut rolled her eyes. "Well, duh! They know we're not suicidal enough to fly at 6,000 feet, don't they? Okay, watch this. They're probably in grid 754. Altair 3, get 'em in the ass."

Ruffnut yanked hard on the stick, and brought Meatlug into a steep climb before diving onto a convenient-looking grid square. "There. You want to shoot a Phantom diving on a target? Come get it, you bastards!"

Meatlug screamed in alarm, and Ruffnut laughed as she caught sight of two smoke trails, coming in from her left. "Left, left, left…"

"Magnum!"

"Now!" A missile roared off its launch rail, and chaff and flares spilled from Meatlug's fuselage as Ruffnut brought the jet into a snap roll to the deck, an unblinking eye on the smallish missiles streaking towards them.

They missed, detonating some distance off in balls of fire and fury.

"There. Once more around the airfield, and we let the boys blow this!"

They swept the environs of the airfield as flak seemed to flow around them. "Rigel, Deneb, Spica, Algol, this is Altair lead. You are clear for..."

Beside her, Altair 2 exploded.

Acting on instinct, Ruffnut took Meatlug into a wingover, and was rewarded by the sight of a MiG-21 bearing down on her. "This is Altair lead! We've got MiGs over the airfield!"

=O=

The contact report came in, and Hiccup swore as they turned left again, leaving another SA-5 chasing their supersonic wake. Toothless warbled incessantly as older SA-2s tore skywards towards them. The old SA-2s had barely enough fuel to reach Toothless at altitude, and were unlikely to hit anything, but the cheap, plentiful missiles were being launched in droves, and had to be tracked lest someone get in a lucky shot.

"Astrid, Ruff's in trouble! It's Altair lead!"

"Pointing us at 'em!"

Hiccup's screen filled with dots. From every point of the compass, Waves of F-111 fighter-bombers were swarming the nest, clipping the treetops as they tore towards airfields and SAM sites.

Just above them were three bogeys. Foxes among the chickens.

Hiccup locked onto the lowest. "Fox three! We're Winchester!"

=O=

Ruffnut barreled across the airfield perimeter at three hundred feet as a sea of flak swept past them. Fishlegs's neck throbbed painfully as he tracked the MiG – correction, two MiGs - across the sky.

"Ruff, they're still following us!"

_Crazy bastards! _The MiG pilots would have to be crazy to follow their quarry through their own flak guns. Ruffnut liked them already.

A ripping noise reverberated through the aircraft as a cannon shell struck home.

"Just the wing, Ruff! Keep flying!"

Another burst of cannon fire ripped past them. Soviet heatseekers probably couldn't work this close to the nice hot ground, and the MiGs had no radar at this height.

"Ruff, he's got us!"

A flat, steady voice echoed over the radio. "Ruff, this is Vega 5; turn two o'clock on my mark!"

Her radar warning receiver beeped, and Ruff swore, hoping that the Falcon would not be let off its leash.

Another burst of cannon fire streaked invisibly by Meatlug even as one of the fighters broke for altitude, ready to dodge the incoming missile. The ascending MiG turned sharply as an Indian SA-6 streaked past it, drawing curtains of flak all the while. Out of the fight.

Apparently, this was an air defense free-fire zone.

The other stayed on the deck.

"MARK!"

Ruffnut turned, presenting Meatlug's un-doppler-shifted-flank to the doppler-radar-guided missile.

The MiG followed – a few seconds too slow. The Falcon headed straight for him. He broke into a roll at the last moment – and ran smack into a hill, exploding in an impressive fireball.

The sound of her own breathing overwhelmed her as Ruffnut realized that she was still breathing.

"Holy crap. Hiccup really knows how to make someone wet his pants, doesn't he?" Fishlegs panted heavily as sixty seconds of repressed terror began coursing through his system.

Ruffnut whooped. "Oh my god that was awesome!" She got on the radio. "Guys, you missed, but the bandit evaded into the ground. Scratch one bandit."

"Uhh… Ruff. The strike package is here." Fishlegs

"This I gotta see!" Ruff craned her head in the direction of the airfield.

Waves of terrain-hugging fighter-bombers swarmed the Nest. Kissing the treetops at just over Mach 1, wings swept all the way back and afterburners blazing, the jets surfed a sea of flak as they made their attack runs. Columns of parachute-retarded high explosives, cluster bombs, runway-cratering weapons, and landmines (to spite anyone who tried to clean up the runways) spilled from their wings, falling onto aprons, aircraft, missile launchers, and slightly-damaged radars.

They wouldn't get them all, and the SAM sites and airfields would probably be back up and running in days, but with the blockade on, parts for SAM launchers, radars, and fighter aircraft were irreplaceable. And with the Gammons gone, SAC Valkyries, now practically untouchable, would return in force to bomb the SAM sites and airfields again and again, keeping them closed for good.

Here and there, fighter-bombers fell to flak, but by the time Ruffnut made her last pass against a SAM site and left for home, a mostly intact strike force was already winging its way back to friendly skies.

=O=

Hiccup gargled as he ran back to Toothless, hurriedly swallowing the disgusting liquid to clear the remnants of a meat stew from his teeth.

They were going back into to cover the SAC bombers hurriedly reattacking airfields across India – the second of the three sorties scheduled for today's air operations.

Astrid was already performing her preflight. "Everything looks good up here." Her voice was sullen – everyone was on edge after the loss of the squadron CO.

"Good back here." Hiccup chirped. "Astrid – we got a kill today. That's five under your belt. You've made ace."

Astrid rolled the word on her tongue. Ace. Ace. She shrugged. "Eh. Isn't going to count for much when the mushroom clouds go up."

=O=

_Author's note: Military tactical call signs typically change depending on mission, unit and date (some call signs are changed daily to avoid giving too much information to the enemy)._

_Real-world: The use of drones in combat goes back substantially further than is commonly appreciated. Ryan Lightning Bug drones were used extensively for reconnaissance (with honest-to-god film cameras) back in Vietnam starting in the mid-60s, and proposals for their use as strike aircraft and SEAD aids (with early guided munitions) surfaced in the early-mid seventies. _


	27. Active Defense

Thanks to CajunBear73, OechsnerC, and everyone else for their reviews and commentary

=O=

Chapter 27: Active Defense

Disputed Area

The C-142 Vertitruck made a low pass over the mountain gorge, giving Heather a good view of the scenery. Amidst towering peaks, their caps lightly dusted with the first snows of autumn, a little chain of huts and small farms stood, strung out along the slivers of flat land that marred the slopes of the rugged valley. Along the huts, a little dirt road – one of the precious few roads running across the poorly trafficked disputed wasteland – wound a convoluted course through the gorge at it snaked towards India.

On the road, three wrecked trucks lay in state amongst a small complex of blast craters, victims of Pacifican air superiority.

The roar of turbojets overwhelmed the Vertitruck's buzzing engines as an F-4 Phantom, a dozen freefall bombs hugging its belly-mounted conformal fuel tank, screamed overhead. In the distance, explosions rumbled, and palls of smoke rose into a clear blue sky.

_Perfect bombing weather. _

The Vertitruck came in to land on the crest of a low hill. Heather adjusted her M1 helmet and twisted the charging knob on her rifle. The ramp went down, and Heather jumped clear just in time to avoid being trampled by a pair of stretcher-bearers with Airborne patches prominently displayed on their shoulders.

Heather ran up a hillside littered with crates of rations, ammunition, and water, and ducked as a lightweight howitzer blasted a shell downrange. The ridge crested, and she hit the deck, mindful of Indian artillery.

Before her, the gorge opened into a broad valley, carpeted in farms and dotted with scores of houses. Columns of dust and smoke rose from burning buildings and artillery fires. A forward air controller, searching for targets, scanned the valley through his binoculars even as his radioman yelled into an olive-green phone. Another F-4 screamed overhead, dumping three more tonnes of high explosive into the cauldron.

"Are you with Intelligence?!" An Airborne Captain crouched down beside her.

"Yeah!" Heather shouted. "Where's the thingamajig?"

"Back here!" He said. "Don't worry! The Indians don't have much arty left around here!"

An Indian heavy machine gun opened up, sending tracers upslope, and Indian mortar rounds sent everyone diving for cover.

Airborne artillery, mortar and heavy machine guns delivered an adequate riposte, and the incoming fire slackened.

"What's going on down there?!" Heather winced as a pair of Thunderbolt attack jets roared over the ridge, their wings bulging with guided missiles.

The Captain laughed. "That down there is brigade headquarters for half the Indian garrison! We've screwed the Indians seven ways to Sunday!"

"Color me skeptical, 'cause they're still shooting at us!" Heather frowned.

The Captain shook his head. "When we rolled up their outposts up north, they decided to send reinforcements from here and from further south! But Air Force rules the skies, so no choppers for them. And there's only two, maybe three one-lane dirt roads running north-south in this entire sector!" He chuckled darkly. "Air Force caught most of them with their pants down, strung out across those godawful roads."

He smiled. "This is a mop-up. Fast air's knocked down the bridge down south, and the Airborne did a great job flying in to capture the towns down there too. The Indians here are locked in, their friends are locked out, and we've chopped 'em into easily digestible chunks.

He sighed. "Gotta say, they're tenacious bastards, though. Fighting us just like they fought the Krauts back in World War Two – or so my Sergeant says…"

"Get down! Bomber strike!" The radioman screamed.

Heather swore as three massive chains of explosions erupted across the valley, sending walls of smoke and dust skywards. The very earth itself seemed to quake as the bombs continued to fall, and a punishing wall of noise rolled over her position. She pushed herself deep into the ground, heedless of the dust and gravel.

"Arc Light." She whispered to herself.

Three B-52 bombers were plastering the valley with nearly a hundred tonnes of high explosive freefall bombs.

The thunder stopped, and Heather gingerly looked up. It was hard to believe anything could have survived that.

And yet…

The heavy machine gun chattered to life again. The Captain grunted in distaste. "Damned B-52 jocks. When will they learn that carpet-bombing doesn't do all _that_ much against dug-in troops? Give me a flight of Phantoms with guided missiles any day. Precision-guided munitions kill the bastards faster and cheaper."

He stood, and shouted. "Okay, people! First platoon goes forward, second provides cover! Be careful, minimize casualties, no need to rush 'em! Let the Air Force do the heavy lifting!" He shook his head at Heather. "The site's back behind the ridge – it's pretty hard to get to; so stay here until I can get back. We're starting early."

The company's mortars got to work.

A steady stream of attack jets passed overhead as the platoon inched its way down into the village. Chinook gunships took up their stations, alternatively roaring across the village in blistering attack passes, shells spewing from their autocannon, or circling lazily just out of range of enemy fire. A slow forward air control plane buzzed lazily overhead, staying low with the helicopters to avoid Indian fast jets.

Counting on air superiority was one thing. Being sloppy was another.

As the Airborne closed in, Indian infantry opened fire from their ruins of farmhouses and irrigation ditches. Heather watched through binoculars as gunships and attack jets made pass after pass against the newly revealed Indian positions (with a little help from the FAC not far from her).

A shoulder-fired missile, then two, then three streaked towards a Chinook, which erupted in a shower of flares even as its pilot maneuvered wildly. Primitive seekers sought flares and tiny fins failed to correct flight paths, allowing the Chinook to escape unscathed. The heavy machine gun rocked to life, sending tracers arcing downvalley into the bombed-out village.

The great shadows cast by the mountains slowly moved across the valley, indifferent to the vast firepower chipping away at the great gorge, carved over the eons by wind, water, and gravity. A fresh ration in her belly, Heather yawned as another artillery barrage started falling around the Indians, pounding them relentlessly even as HLHs lifted fresh truckloads of shells to the isolated hilltop. The Airborne slowly overran the first Indian position, and the process repeated itself as the infantry ground on.

She itched to pick up her rifle, run down into the valley, and join the fight with the rest of them.

It made no sense, of course. She'd just get in the way. Even if she could fight well, she hadn't trained to fight _together with Airborne troops._

A warrior could win a fight. But it took an _army_ to win a battle, and a nation to win a war. And in the grand scheme of things, it was winning wars that mattered.

_That's where the Nazis and Japanese got it wrong, with their pointless talk of ubermench and samurai and their idiotic glorification of the warrior. The army of soldiers beats the band of warriors almost every time. _

And fighting was no longer her job anyway.

The heavy machine gun rocked to life again. Yep, she could believe that it took an average of a quarter of a million bullets to kill one soldier. Heck, for a B-52, it might take five tonnes of bombs to kill a man. What else was new?

An F-4 had just loosed a stick of bombs on a particularly uncooperative farmhouse when Heather spied movement in the distance.

A pair of light tanks – apparently flown in by the Airborne - emerged from the smoke, blasting away at buildings with their stubby main guns. Suddenly, all hell broke loose as three Indian light tanks emerged from hide positions, and blasted the Pacifican light armor virtually point blank – in an apparent bid to avoid being hit by airpower.

Two Sheridans were ripped to shreds almost immediately, but the third survived long enough to fire an antitank missile, which destroyed one light tank. A Chinook gunship raced across the sky, tearing into the tanks with autocannon fire. More fire raked the tanks as Thunderbolt attack jets swooped in, their pilots eager to score tank kills with missiles and gatling cannons.

The Captain jogged back to Heather as the battle wound down. "Where the heck did they come from?" She gestured towards the light tanks.

The Captain shrugged as he led her away from the battle. "Our main attack was from down south, which was why they got all the light tanks." He grimaced. "The boss wasn't careful enough with the Sheridans. And we wasted so much effort flying 'em in with HLHs, too…"

He led her across the ridge. "This is what you came for. We managed to overrun them before they could destroy their equipment."

He led Heather along the ridge, passing by a small troupe of prisoners – two Russians and three Indians, under heavy guard – down to a small pit.

Half-buried in the pit was a cylinder, roughly the size of an oil drum, with wires and plugs protruding from the exposed end.

Heather's eyes opened wide as she eyed the device… and the narrow mountain pass not far below them. This _was_ not a bad place for one.

"Is that…"

"Ask 'em yourself." He turned to the prisoners. "You two tell her what you told me!"

Heather's Russian was rusty, but the gist was clear.

She interrogated them further, but they refused to answer.

She nodded to the Captain. "Good work calling this in, Captain. This is huge."

"You're telling me!" He exclaimed. "If they set that thing off, it'd have had a good shot of blasting the entire hillside into the gorge. That'd have closed the pass quite permanently."

"Also huge politically." Heather pointed out. "But nevermind. The bastards won't say whether or not the thing is safe to handle, but I would guess that it is. We'll have a team dig it up, fly it to a safe, isolated location, and look it over. I've been told to advise you to evacuate the area as soon as possible, but leave a few volunteers to guard the site."

"Will do. You can't be too careful around nuclear demolition charges. How big do you think it is, twenty kilotons?" The Captain rubbed his chin. "Back out west, we were kitted out with medium atomic demolition charges about yay big - just in case Soviet tanks came pouring in from the Kazakh and Kyrgyz Soviet Republics." He stared down at the valley below. "The passes in the Tian Shan Range aren't much wider than these bad boys, so I'm guessing they'd use nukes about the same size."

He raised an eyebrow at Heather. "A bit on-the-fly, isn't it? I thought we'd have procedures in place for this sort of thing."

Heather sighed. "We did not expect them to do this."

"Just like how nobody expected the Soviets would put strategic nuclear missiles in India, and just like how nobody expects them to shoot at us with chemical weapons or tactical nuclear weapons."

The breeze blowing on Heather's exposed skin suddenly felt far too cold. "I presume you have suits stashed away somewhere?"

For a brief moment, and for the first time in her life, Heather was looking forward to wearing a nuclear-biological-chemical warfare suit – basically a suffocating, hot, heavy, bulky rubber-and-plastic suit with a removable gas mask.

"Yeah. Fighting in NBC suits will be godawful, and our ops are going to slow to a crawl, but we'll manage. But we're going to need some warning on when to start putting them on. Frankly, I'm telling my boys to don suits the moment we moment we clear out their forces from the area. Because this…" He gestured to the nuclear demolition charge. "…does not exactly inspire confidence in our intelligence apparatus."

Heather nodded. "I'll… pass on your concerns to my superiors."

A flight of CH-62 Heavy Lift Helicopters came roaring past, light tanks, big self-propelled artillery guns, and shipping containers slung beneath gaping bellies. "Oh good, reinforcements."

Heather scanned the skies for her Vertitruck as the sun sank over the high peaks around them, and the sky turned a brilliant purple. Golden pools of sunlight played across the valley floor.

She inhaled, and let the smell of explosives, dust, and burning rubble fill her nostrils.

Another turbojet roared across the skies, Heather turned to track the aircraft… and hit the deck as a twin-engined Indian light bomber – an old lend-lease Canberra - roared through the valley, unleashing half a dozen bombs on the Airborne troops down below.

Leakers, flying low and fast to slip past Pacifican combat air patrols. The Indians might be able to sneak a few sorties in, but the Air Force would get most of them – and that was what mattered. One or two sorties would hardly turn the tide.

Unless, that is, they were dropping nuclear weapons.

No trace of nuclear freefall bombs and nuclear artillery shells had been found in India so far, but there had been no trace of atomic demolition munitions either.

The Indians here might have been finished, but India was far from beaten.

=O=

The Soviet Major picked at his dinner as he nervously listened in to the conversation. Across the table, Soviet officers from across Assam had gathered to swap stories and tell tales after the meeting. With the relative lull that had settled over the theater over the past three days as the diplomats continued to yell at each other, regional commanders wanted to use it to implement changes from lessons learned over the past week of fighting.

He checked the room. The _zampolit – _the political officer – was conspicuously absent – as were the Indian officers. The Colonel of the air defense regiment was absent too – killed by a Pacifican airstrike, it was said.

"I'm telling you, the General Secretary miscalculated, that stupid bastard." The Colonel of the rocket regiment took another sip of vodka.

The Captain frowned. He liked the General Secretary – a true communist, a friend to his people, not like the tyrannical Stalin. "How were we to know that the capitalists would react so rabidly to an Indian nuclear umbrella?! We've had over a thousand nuclear missiles for five years, and even though they threatened to blockade the motherland, they never actually went ahead and attacked."

"The capitalists have the nuclear advantage. They'll resort to anything to start a war with us." The commander of the FROG short-range rockets opined. "We should just admit defeat and pull out."

"Nonsense." The Colonel said. "That would be a terrible blow to Soviet prestige, and a betrayal of our great ally and friend! How could you suggest such a thing?"

"It's just not worth it." The FROG commander said. He looked conspiratorially at the door, where a young Lieutenant stood guard, watching for the return of the Indian officers. "And… the Indians are getting antsy. I caught an Indian artillery commander trying to borrow a nuclear FROG round. He insisted he didn't know it was nuclear, but I knew better."

"Shhh! They're back!" The Lieutenant said.

The Indian Officer stepped into the room – the same one, the Major noted, that had helped him with his traffic jam those long months ago.

He began to speak, his Russian fluent and crisp. "Friends! I have a great announcement. We are about to embark on a counteroffensive to retake the Pacifican positions!"

The Major nodded. He'd seen the columns of trucks driving by his hide areas – and the effects of the Pacifican airpower that was ravaging them.

"Such an action appears imprudent at the present time, considering the unfavorable correlation of forces in the theater." The Colonel said.

The Indian Officer nodded. "We know. But our leaders insist that we try to retake the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) posthaste!" He sighed. "We must follow orders, of course. What soldiers would we be if we picked and chose which orders to follow?"

Everyone in the room nodded in agreement.

"But there is a _way_ we can retake NEFA." He flourished a map, and placed it on the easel in the middle of the room. "Using tactical nuclear firepower, we can easily eliminate the Pacifican helicopter division that currently holds the mountains. From there on, it will be a simple matter of rounding up and policing any pockets of resistance that may remain."

"Out of the question. The risk of escalation is too great. Moscow would never allow this. And the imperialists will simply respond with their nuclear weapons, and stop your regiments dead in their tracks." The Colonel put down his fork.

"Friends – I implore you to seek permission to use your nuclear weapons. The lives of thousands of my men, the honor of India, the revolutionary zeal of the Indian Communist Party, and the prestige of the Soviet Union all hang in the balance. Moscow has not heeded the cries of my people. Perhaps they would be more reasonable if their own generals showed them the reality on the ground." The Indian officer placed his hands together, and bowed slightly.

The Colonel sighed. "We'll look over your proposal, and see what we can do."

The Major nodded energetically as the Indian left. The Indian proposal was sheer lunacy, but it was nice to see someone else who had faith in World Socialist brotherhood.

The Colonel was scowling, and motioned for the gathered Soviet officers to huddle close. "Police your nuclear weapons, and prepare destruction plans in the event that the Indians try to capture them. Report any unauthorized attempts to use nuclear weapons to me."

The Major's eyes went wide. "But Colonel, the Indians are our allies! Our friends!"

The Colonel nodded. "Desperate friends make dangerous friends."

In the room next door, the Indian Officer's assistant sneered even as he took notes, a huge headseat strapped to his head. The listening device had picked up every word.


	28. Barely Nuclear War

Thanks to CajunBear73, DrBlazer, OechsnerC, and everyone else for their reviews, input, and commentary.

=O=

Chapter 28: Barely Nuclear War

"Diamond 23, this is Mordor. You're heading through busy airspace. Climb to 65,000 and turn radar on, over."

"Acknowledged, Mordor. Diamond 23 out." Hiccup yawned as he gazed out his window. Unbroken white smears of cloud cowed beneath a deep blue sky. For two long weeks, they had flown seemingly endless combat air patrols from the Himalayas to as far away as Sri Lanka, shooting at anything the Indians tried to fly into the fight up north – anything the Indians tried to fly at all.

Hiccup took a sip of water from his helmet straw, and turned on his radar.

Dots swarmed above, around, and below Toothless as they passed over West Bengal. Hiccup raised an eyebrow as he counted trios of slow B-52s, pairs of supersonic Hustlers, and even a few Blackbirds at high altitude. Far below them, clouds of TAC fighter-bombers and fighters buzzed hither and dither as they pounded the invading People's Army of Bengal in a never-ending stream of airpower. Just above treetop level, Hiccup could just barely make out columns of Air Cav and Airborne helicopters as they rushed from spearhead to enemy spearhead, desperately trying to stem the West Bengali advance.

"Wow. They weren't kidding when they said 'busy'." Hiccup turned off his radar. "Oh, go up to 65,000. Hustlers are using 55,000 for some sort of sweep."

Astrid shrugged as she brought Toothless into a shallow climb. "West Bengalis are invading East Pakistan _en masse_. Someone's gotta back up the Pakistani Army."

_Horizontal escalation. _Hiccup chuckled. "Ten bucks says the Indians are sending in 'Volunteers'."

Astrid smirked. "Ten bucks says the Indians deny all involvement."

Toothless warbled in alarm. "Relax, Astrid. It's all medium-range stuff. Harmless. Down boy." He gave his threat board a reassuring pat.

They crossed into the Bay of Bengal, and Hiccup began to pick up the shrill warbles of the Navy's big air-defense cruisers as they scanned the skies for inbound Indian strike aircraft. Pairs of fleet interceptors buzzed leisurely about, covering slow patrol and antisubmarine aircraft from Indian fighters.

The Indian Navy had lost two carriers in the first five days of the war, and their third had been destroyed pierside. With India's fleet of ex-British surface ships barred from the waves by Pacifican naval aviation, the Indian submarine arm had taken up the task of forcing the Pacifican blockade.

"Diamond 23, this is Tiara. We have you on radar. Airspace looks clear today. The Navy sends its regards."

"Tiara, this is Diamond 23. Solid copy. How's the weather down there?"

"A little stormy, Diamond 23."

"Stay safe, Tiara. Diamond 23 out."

Hiccup winced. "Stormy. Good weather for submarines. Bad weather for sub-hunting."

Astrid's face grew grim. _Good luck, you boating bastards. _

The Indian Navy was not going down without a fight, and Navy losses had been all over the news. The worst loss had been one of the Navy's shiny new nuclear-powered air defense escorts, which had the bad luck (or so the press reported) to run right over a slow Indian diesel sub, getting torpedoed and sunk in the process. Over a dozen other ships had been reported sunk or heavily damaged, and rumors abonded of a carrier being secretly towed back to a dry dock in Myanmar under cover of darkness.

They made a turn, went feet dry, and blasted across the Ganges floodplain.

"Diamond 23, this is Diamond 24. Radar on." Snotlout – having again taken over the radio from his backseater – reported. "I hope we get to shoot some of the buggers today."

"Diamond 24, keep a lookout for enemy surface-to-air. And remember; BVR shots are off-limits. Don't get trigger-happy." Hiccup frowned. "Astrid, I don't like this one bit."

"What, flying with Snotlout? Being in charge of someone else?" Astrid smiled flippantly.

"Our mission. We've only got two air-to-air shots each. We're stretched too thin." Hiccup fretted. One of the four Falcons had been replaced with an anti-radar missile.

"Three air-to-air shots." Astrid corrected.

"The last one is nuclear. It doesn't count. There's no way in hell we're going to be shooting it off."

"Bogies 12 o'clock! Coming in at Mach 3!" Snotlout exclaimed. His backseater groaned into the radio.

"Calm down, Snotlout. Those are our birds. We're practically the only ones with Mach 3 aircraft, and that's a four-ship formation." Hiccup said. With three kills already under his belt, Snotlout was getting dangerously reckless.

Oh, who was he kidding. Snotlout had probably been dangerously reckless since the day he was born.

Sure enough, Mordor identified the bogies as a flight of SAC supersonic bombers.

Hiccup whistled as Toothless caught a blast of microwaves from the Valkyrie's payload. In the cavernous bomb bay of the sleek supersonic bomber, engineers had installed one of most powerful sensor payloads ever to fly in an aircraft. Huge cameras, a gargantuan side-looking radar, and a top-secret laser-spectrometry system were only the biggest of the big-ticket items on the Valkyrie. If that didn't sniff out hidden Indian missiles, Hiccup doubted much else would.

They passed over the Deccan. Out of anti-radar missile range – radar range, actually, radars chattered briefly before going silent, irritating Toothless to no end.

An SA-2 radar chattered to life ahead of them, apparently unaware of their presence. "We've got an emitter, eleven o'clock. Magnum! Missile away!"

Astrid watched as an anti-radar missile streaked earthward, and was swallowed up by the vast expanse of land below.

"Come on, come on… don't turn off just yet." The Indian nuisance tactics were reasonably effective, forcing evasive maneuvers, keeping pilots on their toes, and increasing escort and support requirements.

Hiccup swore as the radar turned itself off. Without the radar, the antiradar missile would most certainly miss. "Darnit."

No Indian aircraft made an appearance to challenge Pacifican air superiority, and no more SAM radars lit up to engage. Doubtless, the Indians were biding their time, holding their remaining SAMs and interceptors back for future operations – but in doing so, they had ceded the skies to the JGAF.

They completed their patrol, and headed back towards Pacifican airspace.

"We're coming up on West Bengal again. We might want to go to 70,000 – just to get out of the way." Hiccup flipped his visor open, and gave his eyes a rub. "Holy mackerel, these flights are exhausting."

Hiccup's voice weakened. "Astrid… do you ever wonder whether the Administration knows what it's doing?"

Astrid grimaced. "Who knows? They have more analysts than I do, that's for sure." A lot of people were asking that these days.

Hiccup shrugged. "Yeah… but what the heck are we doing just sitting here? I mean, enemy air defense is down, we've blockaded the country, and we're just… killing time and burning fuel up here? And we're not touching the missiles?"

"Well, we did call for a ceasefire and ask for negotiations. Blowing up the missiles would kinda moot the point of negotiations, right?" Astrid said.

Hiccup sighed. "It sounds bad… but why negotiate when we can just blow them up? We're risking a lot of lives here to score brownie points. And they've been talking for more than a week since we wiped out their high-tier air defenses – the Indians haven't budged an inch. We all know they're putting a counterattack together."

Astrid squirmed uncomfortably. "Well, the Soviets could retaliate with nukes if we started popping their missiles in India…" She paused. "My parents are asking me the same thing, you know. I just told them to stand by our leaders, and give them a free hand to negotiate properly."

Hiccup rubbed his chin. "Where do your folks live?"

Astrid smiled. "Wuhan. Mom still works at the Ford plant. They've got a nice house in the suburbs. She paused. "My brother lives in Shanghai with his wife and kids. My sister Kara's still in Wuhan. Our New Year dinners aren't the biggest, but they're pretty good. Mom makes a mean stuffed fish." She looked thoughtful. "Where does your dad live?"

Hiccup waved it off. "Probably somewhere dark and gross. No New Year dinners at my folks' place, no siree."

"Aunts, uncles, that sort of thing?" Astrid probed.

Hiccup sighed. "Somewhere in North America. Nobody really kept in touch, so we're… on our own."

"Well, maybe you could come over…" Astrid held her tongue. _Stupid, stupid. This war's not over yet. _"Nevermind. Sorry."

"Huh? I'd love to come over for a family dinner…"

Astrid gritted her teeth. Her mother _always _bugged her about her love life, _always_ with an eye on getting grandchildren as soon as possible. It was mostly done in good spirits, of course, but it was embarrassing as heck. And questions would most certainly be asked – eagerly and effusively - if she brought a young man back home for dinner.

But then again, by the time that became a concern, the war would be over – and the _mess_ resolved - one way or another.

Astrid shrugged. "Okay. But…"

The radio crackled to life. "Flight, this is Mordor. This is an alert. Be advised, enemy surface to air installations may begin to employ nuclear weapons. Repeat, enemy surface to air installations may begin to employ nuclear weapons. Nuclear release against ground targets is _not authorized. _Repeat, nuclear release against ground targets is _not authorized._"

Hiccup frowned. "Oh, boy. What happened this time?"

Astrid squinted as she eyed the horizon ahead of her. A glowing dot broke the horizon, and began to ascend into the stratosphere. Two glowing dots. Then three. Her eyes went wide.

"Hiccup, missile launch!"

Hiccup slewed his radar skyward. "Mordor, this is Diamond 23! We have four missiles, Bullseye 90/50, rising fast!"

Astrid moved her hand to her throttle.

As if reading her mind, Hiccup shook his head. "Astrid, we're too far off. They're out of range. They're the Army's problem now."

=O=

The control trailer for the Nike-Hercules surface-to-air missile was crammed with men and machines. The forward base had been placed on high alert – and that meant the only fresh air coming into the trailer was coming in through filter vents. The cramped space was filled with suffocating waste heat, the dim red glow of night-vision preserving lights, and the frenzied terror of men working for their lives. The task before them had only ever been performed from start to finish on the sterile fields of desert proving grounds, and for the operators within, it had only ever been simulated.

The simulations had been convincing enough, because they were mostly doing their jobs correctly.

Two hundred kilometers above, four SS-1 Scud ballistic missiles fell noiselessly towards Combat Base Bravo, the fuel tanks making up most of their bulk completely empty. Capable of being fitted with cluster bombs, chemical payloads, or nuclear warheads, the Scuds were versatile weapons – useful across the full spectrum of conflict from counter-insurgency to global thermonuclear war.

Across the Himalayas, two dozen more Scuds arced across the sky, aimed at targets in the rear of the forces occupying the sacred soil of India.

As the Scuds plunged to earth, they were illuminated by a powerful truck-mounted radar, which tracked their position down to the meter.

Outside CB Bravo, four Nike-Hercules missiles, each four stories tall and crowned by massive fins, roared off their erect launch rails towards the Scuds, ascending heavenward atop plumes of smoke and thunder – an impressive sight that was rather wasted on the prospective spectators, who, decked out in rubberized suits, dove for bunkers, foxholes and slit trenches, pulling dirt-covered sheets of metal overhead and donning gas masks as they went. The agglomeration of tents, shipping containers, fuel and ammunition dumps, and perforated metal runways that formed Combat Base Bravo grew unusually quiet, as men braced for nuclear and chemical attack prayed for shrapnel-spewing bomblets instead.

The Scuds plunged downward at six times the speed of sound, and three functioning Nike-Hercules missiles (the fourth having corkscrewed off to crash into a mountaintop) rose to meet them, steered by remote control from the trailer on the ground as they accelerated to four times the speed of sound. Equations that would have taken expert mathematicians hours to solve on many meters of graph paper were solved in seconds by bundles of wire and arrangements of switches, allowing the Nike-Hercules missile to be steered to where the computer _predicted_ the Scud would be. And these predictions, guided by the laws of the spheres and up-to-date position data from the powerful radar set, were exceedingly accurate.

The missiles barreled towards each other at a relative velocity of nearly ten times the speed of sound. Bullets seeking bullets – but over twice as fast.

The Nike strained against its great velocity to make last-millisecond adjustments to its trajectory as, in the blink of an eye, the Scud grew from an invisible dot to an olive-green pencil covered in Cyrillic markings.

The two missiles passed each other less than a hundred meters apart – a mere football field's length in an endless sky.

The miss distance was immaterial. On command, the Nike blossomed into a twenty-five kiloton nuclear fireball, obliterating itself and the Scud and sending a gentle flash across the Himalayas.

Two Scuds emerged from the skies above CB Bravo and disintegrated into hundreds of grenade-sized bomblets, raining across the CB and the wasteland beyond. As the Scuds had accuracies in the half-kilometer range, perhaps a quarter of the bomblets landed inside the base's confines.

When the smoke cleared at CB Bravo and bases like it, dozens of helicopters and cargo aircraft lay wrecked and burning. Further forward, at the Pacifican claim line, an Indian artillery barrage pounded Pacifican positions as Indian infantry and tank brigades – the vanguard of an Indian counterattack - emerged from hide positions.

And for the first time since World War II, nuclear weapons had been used in anger once again.


	29. No Nuclear Use Threshold

Thanks to CajunBear73, OechsnerC, and everyone else for their reviews, commentary and input.

=O=

Chapter 29: No Nuclear Use Threshold

Portland National Capital Region

Joint Government of the Pacific

The Secretary looked out the window. The trees of the front lawn had turned glorious shades of orange and red, and their leaves were positively glowing in the dawn light. A steady stream of traffic moved smoothly, efficiently, the midmorning snarl still an hour away. The city beyond thrummed with life, commerce, and smog.

He sighed as he contemplated his fruitless meeting with the Indian representative at the British Embassy. With no formal diplomatic relations with the Republic of India since the Bengali partition and concurrent nationalization of Pacifican assets, diplomacy with India was a slow, messy affair.

Oh, who was he kidding? Trying to negotiate with India and the Soviet Union simultaneously was a slow, messy affair. The two communist allies hadn't even bothered to create a unified negotiating position on the entire crisis.

And it had finally gone nuclear. Sure, the only casualties from the nukes had been half a dozen Scud missiles in flight, but that hadn't changed the news that was carrying headlines across the nation. The Secretary's eyes followed a newspaper delivery van as it scooted down the street.

A small crowd of people were milling in front of the wrought-iron fence, some with placards held high.

Kill or Be Killed. Nuke 'em till they glow. A Chief Protects His Own. Strike First. Commie Stooge. Traitor.

The last two irked him so. He had _not_ spent his entire Provincial career running against closet socialists to be called a Commie Stooge. He turned to exit the office – the view of the gardens from his own office would be much better for his blood pressure. The door suddenly opened, and a ceremonial Marine guard ushered in the National Security Advisor.

"Richard, how did the Indians take the proposal?" The Advisor took a seat, and the Secretary poured her a cup of coffee.

"Another flat-out rejection. They've convinced themselves that developing nuclear weapons is an inalienable right of sovereign nations, that we should not have to 'guarantee' their nuclear program, and so our guarantee isn't a concession at all." He sighed. "I guess it makes a _kind _of sense, but…"

The Advisor tilted her head. "And the Soviets?"

The Secretary shook his head, causing his jowls to shift. "They want our nukes out of Europe. They might be willing to settle for Turkey, though."

The Advisor seethed. No. Frickkin'. Way.

She shrugged. "Well, at least they can agree that they don't want to remove their nukes. We've got news coming out of Europe and India, all of it ugly." She took a sip of coffee. "There was a ten-minute firefight in Berlin last night. Two dead, six wounded. Everyone's on edge there, and GSFG's holding a major military exercise. But the kicker is the SIGINT from India. Troposcatter intercepts between Soviet rocket jockeys and higher headquarters. They're not using Indian landlines."

The Secretary gritted his teeth. "What's got their goat? A first strike?"

"We've corroborated from other sources, but reports indicate a split between Indian and Soviet intentions. And other communications are hodgepodge requests for security troops, supplies… someone's running scared."

"What kind of split?" The Secretary hushed. "Do the Indians want to launch? Can they launch at all?"

"We… are no longer sure who's really in charge of the missiles. It's not even clear that it's the Prime Minister who wants to launch anymore." The Advisor whispered. "The Indian counterattack's stalling - badly, and it's getting very unhealthy in New Delhi."

"That fast?! That's not good news, isn't it?" The Secretary shook his head.

The Indian Scuds had been launched as part of a major Indian counterattack, with the apparent goal being the reclamation of the disputed territory. The failure of this attack would put a lot of pressure on the Indians to escalate – even when it was _crystal clear_ that global thermonuclear war would be suicidal for India while being 'merely' severely damaging to the Joint Government.

"Nope."

"Well, at least they're not having more fun than we are." The Secretary gestured out the window at the growing crowd of increasingly concerned citizens.

Chants began to come in through the window.

_Nuke them! Nuke them! Nuke them! Nuke them!_

The Secretary sighed. "You know this means we're going for Tutti Frutti, right?" Confusion and nuclear weapons were a really, really bad combination.

The Advisor nodded. "Given the escalation, the confusion in the Soviet nuclear command in India, and the escalating risk of an accidental or unauthorized launch? Yes. Operation Tutti Frutti is the least escalatory option available." She handed him a report.

The Secretary frowned. "Any bigger options?"

"Tutti Frutti involves massed coordinated airstrikes from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean. How much bigger do you want to go?"

"You know what I mean." The Secretary stared flatly at the Advisor.

The Advisor chuckled. "The Secretary of Defense advises me that we can pick big nuclear, small nuclear, or non-nuclear. What else do you want, the Drago sundae?" The Advisor chuckled.

The Secretary ran through the permutations of the plan he had been presented. Options ranged from strikes just against short-range missiles to strikes against all missiles to strikes against the Indian nuclear program… all the way up to attacks on Indian infrastructure, industry, and urban floor space.

His eyes went wide as he studied the report. The consensus position had changed. It was all there, spelled out in black-and-white, in neat little columns in cost-benefit matrices, line graphs, and scenario trees. "Janet, did you read the report?"

"Just the gist." The Advisor started to leaf through the report, and grew quiet. "Oh."

The President walked into the room, a grim look on his face and bags under his eyes. He'd practically aged a decade in the past two weeks. Members of the Executive Committee followed him in.

"Mr. President! We need to make a decision. Fast." The Secretary leaned forward as the President collapsed into a chair. "It is the collective opinion of myself, Janet, the Director of State Intelligence and most of us…"

"All of us!" The Treasury man piped.

"Okay, all of us …that that the present situation has become untenable. The Soviet and Indian reaction to the failure of the Indian counteroffensive and use of nuclear anti-ballistic missiles has been uncompromising, and there are signs of confusion and panic in the Soviet nuclear missile command in India." The Secretary proceeded to outline the situation.

"We advise implementing Tutti Frutti. Now."

The President looked nonplussed. "Eh. While you people were assessing the strategic situation, our friends in Congress practically kidnapped me… for a long talk." He shrugged.

The Secretary turned pale.

"Relax. I knew it would take a few hours for the picture to clarify, and I had the football next to me at all times, so I let them waste my time." He sighed. "Our friends in Congress… can no longer ignore our 'inaction in the face of this escalating crisis'."

"I thought I was going to be impeached before the day was out, and Ike thrown out with me until they found someone who would push _all_ the buttons." He shrugged again. "Thinking about how to weasel out of it with emergency war powers hurt my head."

"But now… I can stay in office _and_ uphold my oath to act in the best interests of this nation at the same time! For _now_ naked violence _is_ _finally _more profitable than negotiation." He chuckled darkly. "Okay. Tutti Frutti. Big nukes, small nukes, or no nukes?"

"It's a sliding scale of escalation risk versus effectiveness, time, and casualties. We expect the Indians to use nuclear SAMs against our strike force; using nukes runs the risk of Indian nuclear attacks on our ground forces." The Secretary opened his report. "But the latest graphs aren't straight – it's more of an S-shape…"

The Secretary of Defense put down the phone. The door opened, and a military attaché walked in.

"No nukes then. We'll have to risk missing a few missiles." The President declared.

The attaché spoke. "We would advise against that, sir. Tutti Frutti no-nukes will require twelve hours to generate the necessary forces. Tutti Frutti small-nukes, which is our favored option, can be launched in as little as two hours. And I would like to remind you, sir, the forces involved in Tutti Frutti no-nukes are an order of magnitude greater in scope – instead of a few dozen supersonic bombers, we're looking at hundreds of strike and escort aircraft. Losses will be correspondingly greater – especially against nuclear SAMs and nuclear air-to-air missiles. Tutti-Frutti big-nukes, our most responsive option, is a massed IRBM counterforce strike, with which we can eliminate the Indian nuclear deterrent and associated facilities in under fifteen minutes should the need arise, at the cost of expending five hundred one-megatom missile warheads. We believe the latter option to be grossly escalatory at this point in time."

The President shook his head. "If I recall, the small-nukes option will involve the detonation of up to three hundred one-kiloton bombs on Indian soil. That's… unacceptable as a first move."

"The missile sites are a mix of soft and semi-hardened sites. We're talking dirt embankments for most of them; concrete shelters for some. With precision-guided nuclear weapons, groundbursts up to 0.5 kilotons will ensure destruction of the target set. In addition to the main heat and blast effects, prompt neutron radiation effects and fallout will be substantial; but the fallout effects will lie primarily with short-term radiation sickness over small-to-medium-sized areas – think a small town - in the short term. Fallout effects will last two weeks tops, except for relatively small hotspots around the craters, which will likely remain unsuitable for long-term habitation for some decades unless remediation measures – like scooping out all the dirt and burying it – are performed."

The attaché pulled out a diagram. "We anticipate… ten thousand civilian injuries and deaths at most. We've already inflicted that level of civilian casualties in West Bengal over the past two weeks of bombing. Long term effects, based on data from Japan, will be minimal. Perhaps a three percent absolute increase in cancer rates _only _among the ten thousand people who got radiation sickness in the initial attack."

The Secretary's sighed. "If I may, sir… an analysis of the enemy's pattern of behavior suggests that they are likely to escalate regardless of what we do. _They_ blew up the crisis every time we tried to compromise. Stealing a march on them might be just what the doctor ordered."

The President's jaw was set hard. "This will irrevocably poison relations between India and the Pacific for two hundred years. If nothing else, we will be blamed for every goddamned cancer case and birth defect in the subcontinent for generations to come, whatever the science says!"

The Treasury man spoke. "Now hold on there. We dropped two dozen nukes on the Japanese, and, well, we're best buddies now! What was that, two dozen twenty-kiloton nukes… five hundred kilotons of kaboom? Here we're talking about barely three hundred kilotons total!"

"Less, actually." The attaché raised a finger. "The nukes are adjustable – what we call dial-a-yield. We can dial 'em down to 100-tons TNT-equivalent. Baby nukes. No bigger than a B-52 raid. Thirty kilotons total. By tonnage, we've dropped more bombs over the past two weeks."

The President looked somewhat sick. "We occupied Japan for a decade, and reshaped their entire society – of course they're our best buds! And they started the war by _invading us_, fair and square – so we were well within rights to finish it with extreme prejudice! Loosing nukes on India – even tiny ones - would be un-Pacifican!"

The Secretary of Defense knelt down. "Mr. President, consider this. Like the Secretary said, they'll probably drop nukes on the Airborne whether or not _we _use nukes first – they're probably making arrangements for it right _now_. What happens then? We nuke what's left of their arsenal? We take the punch and withdraw? We feed the Airborne into a nuclear meatgrinder? We order the Drago Sundae? Either way, Pacifican nukes – big ones - will be going off on Indian soil. Might as well roll the dice, and nip this situation in the bud." He sighed. "And since we'd be flying in low-level tactical bombers, their nuclear SAMs will be going off at low level even if our bombs were all non-nuclear. If they wanted to, they'd blame us for that, too."

The President looked up. "The Soviet reaction…"

The Advisor scoffed as she closed her copy of the report. "The Soviets are probably as worried about losing control of their nukes as we are. It hardly makes sense for them to escalate if we solve their problem for them. I say screw it. Small nukes all the way."

"This also has a good chance of shocking the Soviets into pulling back from the brink." The Secretary added.

The President gulped. "That's what the other guys thought when they tested that nuclear missile! Or when they shot our men! Or when they, god forbid, launched a senseless counteroffensive! And this will play horribly to the world press! We need to contain the Soviet Union. We cannot afford to lose credibility with the Third World for decades – possibly centuries to come!"

"India left the Third World when they sided with the Soviets! The Soviet Union gave nuclear weapons to a nation with evidently poor decision-making! They are reaping what they have sown, and setting an example for the ages!" The Secretary pointed out. "And like you said yourself: We can always win the escalation!" He paused. "It is _rational _for us to escalate! Right now, it's the _least costly _option!"

The President looked around the room. The men and women of the Executive Committee stared back at him. He stood, and looked at the very large crowd of concerned citizens that had now gathered beyond the fence – and the bustling city beyond.

The Secretary walked up next to him. "Mr. President. I know we both _viscerally_ distrust the cliché where the hard decision is the right one. We saw where that sort of thinking got the bad guys in World War II - damned Japanese and Germans decided to roll dice and fight unwinnable wars instead of capitulating."

"But it's different this time – or at least, it looks that way, I guess. Winning through nuclear war was always, on some level, part of the plan. We've actually crunched the numbers – or at least tried our best. This is as by-the-book as it gets." He glanced at the President.

The President gritted his teeth. "Tell the generals to prepare their forces for Tutti Frutti. Small nukes. Prepare to contact the Soviet and Indian representatives for negotiations immediately after the strike concludes."

He dismissed the Committee, and the attachés left hurriedly as long-standing plans were hastily set in motion.

The President sighed, and grumbled. "We miscalculated after all. I just hate that the damned idiots who jump at shadows think they were right. And how the demagogues of the future will spin this."

The Secretary shook his head. "The war's not over yet, sir. We'll just have to… see how it goes."

=O=

_Author's note: Judging whether the decision-making was sound or not is an exercise for the fictional historian and, of course, the reader. We'll see what happens. *Author laughs maniacally*_


	30. Constrained Force-Reduction Salvo

Thanks to CajunBear73 and OechsnerC for their reviews and commentary.

=O=

Chapter 30: Constrained Force-Reduction Salvo

Stoick smiled to himself as he watched the markers on the battlefield plot shift. A staffer pulled a marker for an Indian battalion off the map, where it joined six others in a plastic bin.

One of his staff officers came forward with a map. "I'm telling you, sir. This is a diversion from a major ground offensive into East Pakistan. With the failure of their counteroffensive, the Indians will need another way to put pressure on us on the negotiating table. What better way than an invasion of East Pakistan? We need to shift tactical air assets onto those positions _now_, before they start moving."

Stoick tried to make sense of the Army map, but decided that it was beyond his expertise. "Colonel, take this up with General Kwok. See what he thinks of this matter."

The Indians had tried their best to disguise their forces – up until last night, half the people in the room would have bet that the forces in Assam had been earmarked for a massive invasion of East Pakistan. If they tried to force the mountain passes leading into the disputed area, the Indians had the unenviable task of facing a small force at a chokepoint which made greater numbers moot, like the Persians at Thermopylae. One can only fit so many battalions on an isolated mountain road before they get in each others' way, and before supplying them becomes impossible.

And this time, it was the Spartans who were darkening the skies with their arrows.

Many army commanders would have taken another path, and attacked elsewhere, instead of trying to force the passes, which, presumably, was why Frank was so insistent that it was a diversion.

He smiled at the marker representing yet another cell of B-52s as it made its way over the narrow mountain passes leading up to the Himalayas. That he could work with.

General Kwok walked over, the staff officer in tow. "General Haddock. The Indians threw a pretty good force at us – two whole light infantry brigades, in fact, with plenty of artillery and tank support, and what we believe to be a crack armored division. It's an awful lot to sacrifice for a diversionary operation."

Stoick raised an eyebrow. "Sacrificed?"

"Yessir. Uh… latest reports on the ground are that the last pockets of Indian airborne troops are hours from destruction, and that another Indian armored brigade has come on the line to replace the one they stuck into our buzzsaw, sir."

The Indian airborne force had been decimated, caught between Pacifican air superiority, Army SAM batteries, and counter-landings by Airborne quick-reaction forces.

Between the efforts of antimissile operators, the dispersed nature of the Combat Bases, and the inaccuracy of the missiles, their Scud attack had caused only limited damage. Stoick shuddered as he imagined the packed apron outside showered in bomblets, reminding himself that his headquarters was well out of Scud range.

The Colonel raised his hand to speak. "Sir, with the Indian counteroffensive decisively broken, the Indians will turn to other options to escalate, such as invading East Pakistan."

Stoick shook his head. "If the Indians do that, we take the conflict nuclear, and they know it. No. They'll go nuclear before they do that. This is why our tactical airpower must be rationed carefully. We'll need every sortie if we're going to have to clear out those ballistic missiles."

He glanced at the bigger map. The Administration would give orders for Operation Tutti Frutti any minute now – he knew it in his bones. He'd already held back half his airstrikes for the day to minimize the time it would take to get them in the air.

The doors to the command center swung open.

General Drago Bludvist strode into the room, flanked by half a dozen of his staffers. The predatory grin on his face reached from ear to ear, and his piercing gaze was locked squarely on Stoick.

Stoick sighed as Drago's staffers began to clear out their desks. Orderlies packed planning documents into doilies as critical elements of the SAC bombing apparatus prepared to relocate to their nuclear command posts.

They were going nuclear, and SAC wanted to be in a nuclear posture if and when the conflict escalated.

"Sir, the President is on line one."

He picked up the phone even as the staffer distributed contingency orders around the room. Not much needed to be said. Scattering aircraft and troops – even at the expense of upfront firepower – was a necessity if nuclear operations were likely.

Drago gave Stoick a mock salute, spun on his heels, and headed out the door.

=O=

Pickup trucks drove to the flight line in ones and twos, carrying clusters of pilots in grey-green pressure suits on their beds.

The entire squadron had sat through the briefing in stunned silence. Sure, they had trained extensively for it. Sure, the nukes to be used were all TV-guided firecrackers, with yields under a kiloton – a fraction of the yield of the atomic bombs used in WWII. And sure, the targets were point targets – individual missile launchers and weapons storage sites, not area targets like dispersal fields.

But _nuclear war. _The words had a ring to it.

They'd been assigned to escort SAC bombers conducting limited precision-guided nuclear strikes against the Nest. Over the past two weeks, they'd stripped the Nest of defending fighters and whittled away at its SAMs. Now it was finally time to pull out its nuclear-tipped teeth.

With TV-guided _nuclear_ weapons.

Hiccup's teeth ground as he pondered the lost possibilities. He'd helped formulate the contingency plans, drawn up hastily over the last three weeks of the crisis.

Astrid broke the silence. "Hiccup, are you feeling okay?"

Hiccup smarted. "I could have done it."

Astrid frowned. "Done what?"

"The nuclear missiles are what, two meters wide? Twenty meters long? Surrounded by dirt berms so it has a good chance of surviving a near-miss by a 1,000 kg bomb? Covered in camouflage nets to make TV-guided bombs break lock? Contrast lock or no contrast lock, I could have steered a guided bomb all the way into that puppy, no nukes needed." Hiccup seethed. "Okay, I might have needed three or four bombs to get a good hit in, but I did it a few times in the simulator!"

Astrid shook her head. "That's the problem, Hiccup. Most people can't do it. Most of SAC's boys can't do it." She sighed. "While you and I may try to be our best selves… heroes don't win wars, Hiccup. Systems win wars. If we had an army of me, and an army of you, we'd have…"

"A whole lot of bickering?"

Astrid chuckled. "Basically, we're us. Most people aren't. And wars are fought by most people. Competent professionals, sure, but not everyone can be a fighter ace or a crackerjack engineer. With adequate training and drive, sure – but not everyone can make that commitment."

Hiccup sighed. "CAA was three months away from fixing the contrast lock problem. They were less than six months away from getting the guided cluster bomb to work properly – and Bob told me last week how _fast _everything was going because of the war. Now the guided cluster bomb would have scattered hundreds of grenades around a fragile and highly flammable missile, berms or no berms, average operator or not – a kill for sure. But nope. The Indians had to screw around _now._"

"Some of the missiles are in concrete shelters. And you heard the Colonel: it'll take too long to assemble all the fighter-bombers, their escort, Wild Weasel, jammer support, AWACS, tankers…" Astrid counted off her fingers.

Hiccup briefly glared at Snotlout, who was chatting with his backseater in the pickup just ahead. "The technology was _nearly_ there – we were _so_ _close_. I guarantee it, Astrid - just two years from now, we'll be able to nail every last one of those missiles without using a single nuke. But because of naysayers, funding, and, oh, who am I kidding – the hard, _practical_ limits to rates of technological progress - we only have prototypes of the necessary weapons systems."

Astrid laughed. "You go to war with the army you have. Not the army you wish you had."

They reached the hardened shelter. Technicians loaded nuclear-tipped Falcon air-to-air and anti-radar missiles – painted a gleaming white, the color of nuclear weapons – into weapons bays, entering codes to arm the weapons as they went. Hiccup smiled as a technician set a dial to zero-zero-zero – an arming code unforgettable even under intense stress. An ageing man with a metal leg strode out to meet them.

Hiccup smiled. "Gobber? What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be back in the main hangar?"

"Thought I'd send you off!" Gobber gave them a nod. "Good luck. And bag an extra SAM for old Gobber, would ya?"

Astrid nodded, and hopped into the cockpit, while Hiccup just stood there, staring at his mentor. He thought of the opportunities, the contacts, the resources that Gobber had managed to shove his way, through his whining, complaining, and messes. Had he ever really properly thanked Gobber?

"Thanks, Gobber. I… know you know I'm very grateful for everything you've done for me over the years. And… I know I can be abrasive. I guess… I just want to say… thank you. For… everything." He locked down his helmet, and climbed into the cockpit.

Gobber just smiled. "You can repay me by working your arse off when you get back in one piece."

Hiccup just nodded, and clambered onto the ladder.

They taxied onto the runway, right behind a stream of silvery bombers, the slim white shapes of guided nuclear bombs clear and bright next to their bulging fuel pods.

Toothless roared off the runway into a late afternoon sky.

Astrid scanned the pale brown earth and swirling cottony clouds below them as they ascended to altitude.

She'd miss the view. But there was a nuclear war on. On a battlefield where a blinding nuclear flash could come at anytime, the Mark I eyeball was simply too vulnerable. Nor did she trust the fancy new electronic anti-flash visors they had been issued.

"Curtains down. Instruments only." She advised. "Okay, Toothless, we're blind. You'll be doing the seeing from here." Toothless's eyes and ears weren't immune to nuclear effects, but they were far less fragile – and far more replaceable - than her own.

On the other hand, they'd flown Toothless mostly on instruments or in pitch darkness for _months _now. And virtually none of their tasks had ever involved anything resembling combat in visual range.

Toothless had always been seeing for them. But something about the black curtains over the windows seemed to make it more _real. _

=O=

From the cockpit of his personal Valkyrie bomber, _Bewilderbeast III_, Drago smirked as he examined the radar display. While the bulk of the operation would be carried out by the more numerous Hustlers, his Valkyries had been tasked with attacking the most hostile areas – including the complex of nuclear missiles in Central India.

He knew that some people scoffed at him behind his back for maintaining a bomber for himself. Such people knew little of the necessities of generalship, Drago thought.

In World War II, Curtis LeMay had personally led bomber raids into Japanese airspace. The effort to assess the performance and appreciate the difficulties of his aircrews had been repaid tenfold. With superior insight into the operational realities limiting his bombers, Curtis LeMay had been able to devise _and implement _war-winning tactics and strategies, allowing him to succeed where men of lesser insight, determination, and moral courage had failed.

Operation Tutti Frutti was the first nuclear bombing offensive since WWII. Drago had every intention of being in the thick of it. And thanks to modern radar technology, it was all being recorded on magnetic tape. No lesson would go unlearnt, no insight unseen. Not while General Drago Bludvist was on the frontlines.

And a leader had to lead by example. To expect his men to take risks that he was personally unwilling to bear reeked of cowardice. If one demanded much from one's men – and Drago demanded nothing less than perfection – one _had_ to meet those same standards.

He turned on the radio, a general on elephant-back addressing his massed men. He spoke slowly and clearly, mincing every word.

"Hear me! This is… General Bludvist. Today, we… stand on the brink… on a monumental battle, critical for the security… the prosperity… the survival… of our great Nation. We have long expected… planned for… trained for such a battle. Today, we fight it! Today, we win it!"

They passed into Indian airspace, keeping their distance behind the Blackbird 'skirmish line'.

"Gold lead, this is Black lead. Emitters are quiet. Skies look clear."

Drago stared at his radar display at the ocean below. The packets that made up the SAC offensive were the only supersonic aircraft in the vast volume of sky over the Bay of Bengal.

His pilot spoke. "This is Gold lead. We are feet dry."

The westbound packets of bombers mingled with packets of supersonic aircraft crisscrossing Indian airspace as the Deccan highlands loomed ahead of them – hopefully not enough packets to give the game away.

Drago smiled as he gazed upon his foe for the first time. "There it is, Captain. The Nest."

_Bewilderbeast III_ crooned as Indian search radars squawked at them from across the mountaintops, regally ignoring the rabble of gun radars and medium-range-missile radars that chirped away pointlessly, twenty kilometers below.

More packets of supersonic bombers blazed into enemy airspace. The Indians should have been catching on that their skies were somewhat more crowded than usual.

"Gold lead, this is Purple 2. Music is loaded and ready to go."

A Gammon radar roared to life, and Drago sneered. "Come to papa."

=O=

"That General Bludvist is a piece of work, isn't he?" Hiccup adjusted Toothless's electronic warfare suite. "I mean, striking first is well and good, but he seems a little too… happy about it."

Astrid brought Toothless straight and level at Mach 3 and 60,000 feet, perfectly mimicking the flight path of a B-70 Valkyrie – bait for what was left of the Indian SAM network. "Hey, he's coming in right behind us. That's some gumption right there. They say his boys love him, and he sounds like a leader I'd be happy to follow to hell and back."

She checked her fuel gauge. "Plus, he _has _to look happy. It's part of SAC's act to scare the Soviets."

_To hell and back._ Hiccup nodded.

Toothless, his ears open, cautiously scanned the highlands twenty kilometers below, wary of signals from between the weathered, forested peaks of ancient lava flows.

A SAM battery roared to life.

"Black 5, SAM launch, Bullseye 200/550!" Hiccup yelled. "Magnum! Missile away!"

An AGM-76 nuclear-tipped anti-radiation missile (ARM), its white paint gleaming in the cloudless sunlit stratosphere, streaked towards the offending SAM site.

Practice rounds were painted orange. Conventional warshots were painted grey. In the Air Force, white was the domain of live nuclear weapons.

"ECM on. Astrid, punch it!" Hiccup checked his radar as a lone SA-5 barreled towards them at Mach 3. _Expect a twenty-five kiloton nuclear warhead. _

Toothless shed his disguise, popped off the radar reflectors, and leapt into action.

Hiccup watched as the ARM broke Mach 5 as it hurtled earthward. The SAM radar turned itself off, eager to break the missile's lock. Hiccup smirked darkly. With a one-kiloton nuclear warhead, the ARM would have a fair shot of badly damaging the "soft" radar even if it landed a good kilometer away.

Well, at least they hadn't given people the go-ahead to start popping off 200-kiloton short-range attack missiles for SAM suppression. Those would have killed the entire SAM battery, missiles, radar, and all, and the city next door for good measure.

The radio crackled to life. "SAM! SAM! Magnum! Black 4, SAM launch! Maneuvering!"

Astrid gunned the throttle, and brought Toothless around into a sharp, countrysized turn even as Toothless climbed for their lives.

"SAM! Black 2, SAM launch! Magnum!" More SAM warnings filled the airwaves as missile after missile left its launch rail, hurtling into a lightly overcast sky.

Far fewer missiles than the week before, but if these ones were nuclear-tipped…

The SAM radar turned back on, set on bagging Toothless with a nuclear missile.

Toothless continued to gain altitude, and, as usual, the missile failed to keep up with the turn. Hiccup watched his screen as the missile steadily closed, even as Toothless strained to maximize separation. "Astrid, point our tail five o'clock!"

A blast from behind was far more survivable than a blast from the side. Nine kilometers… Eight…

"Roll left!" If they were to maximize their survival in the face of the hail of neutrons the bomb would surely send their way, they had to put as much of Toothless's bulk between themselves and the fireball as possible. Toothless began a slow roll – the fastest he could handle at Mach 3.3.

Eight... Seven… Six… Seven...

At seven kilometers, the missile detonated in a massive nuclear fireball five hundred meters across. Toothless groaned as the blast wave rocked the aircraft, and the cockpit screamed with radiation alarms as a wisp of neutrons sleeted through Toothless.

Hiccup checked the dosimeter. Minimal dose. Brushing the upper limit for a radiation worker's yearly exposure, but well, civilian limits were too low anyway. Heh.

If they had been in the open air, without the big neutron-absorbing kerosene tank, and titanium fuselage in between themselves and the blast… Hiccup was sure they'd have been somewhat worse for wear.

Toothless had saved 'em once again with sheer mass. Not that he was overweight or anything.

"Hiccup? Hiccup! Are we okay?"

"Hiccup!" Astrid frantically closed her eyes, trying her best to feel for any nausea that might mark the first signs of radiation poisoning. Her gut churned slightly as she wondered whether Hiccup, barely a meter behind her, was in any condition to speak.

Far below them, barely a dozen meters away from a stunningly brave, still-active SAM radar, Toothless's nuclear anti-radiation missile initiated in a massive, hundred-meter fireball of its own, leveling the SAM site, knocking down farmhouses four hundred meters down the road, and throwing a plume of radioactive dirt high into the air.

As the dust cleared, personnel in the highly exposed radar vans, the security cordon, and the reload repair shack, or anyone caught out of cover within several hundred meters perished, variously vaporized, blasted, irradiated, and cut down by shrapnel. As the shaking stopped, a lucky few Soviet SAM technicians in foxholes covered with dirt and metal sheeting cried with joy, thankful to be alive.

"Hiccup! Are you okay back there?!" Astrid's frantic voice snapped Hiccup from his reverie, and he looked up from his radar screen, where plumes of dust and dirt stretched high into the air.

"Yeah, yeah." Hiccup shook his head. "We're fine. Minimal rads."

"Damnit, Hiccup, I thought you were comatose or something!"

Drago's voice roared over the radio. "Roundtable! Roundtable! Roundtable!"

Hiccup sighed. "That's their cue."

"Black flight, this is Black Leader. Call in."

Out of eight available aircraft, Black flight had lost one – grievous losses for a conventional campaign, considering that the twelve-jet squadron had only lost two jets in the past two weeks of fighting. For a nuclear one, these were very light losses.

They circled the province-sized missile dispersal complex as the Valkyries of Gold flight bore down on their targets unopposed.

Bomb bay doors slid open, and, one by one, guided nuclear bombs unfurled cruciform wings as they descended into the howling slipstream. Through primitive electronic eyes, hazy with interference and cloud, harried weapons systems officers shepherded them towards the revetted launch pads, warhead storage bunkers, and command nodes of the Group of Soviet Forces in India.

Much to General Bludvist's displeasure, his subordinate's guided nuclear bomb missed its intended target by forty meters, landing well outside the earthworks and camouflage nets protecting the SS-5 Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile.

Had the missile been fully fueled and erect, a regular 1,000-kilogram bomb would have had an excellent chance of destroying it. But since the missile was still horizontal and heavily revetted, such a bomb would only have had a slim-to-fair chance of damaging something critical on the weapon.

Slim to fair, of course, was completely inadequate where nuclear war was concerned - which was why the weaponeers had allocated to the target a single subkiloton guided nuclear bomb.

Proximity fuse jammed, the diminutive 250-kilogram guided bomb instantly blossomed into a massive fireball with the firepower of two hundred tons of TNT the moment it hit dirt, sucking the missile out of its revetment and crushing it like a spent soda can.

Their targets destroyed, the bombers banked away, and headed for home.


	31. Love on the Nuclear Battlefield (1)

Thanks to CajunBear73, OechsnerC, Overtoast, and everyone else for their reviews, commentary, and input.

=O=

Chapter 31: Love On the Nuclear Battlefield (1)

Astrid waited impatiently as Hiccup made his way down the cockpit access ladder, a scowl on her face.

"You know, between constant air operations, a week of deferred maintainece, and gust loads from a twenty-five kiloton nuclear blast, it's a wonder Toothless hasn't fallen apart. I'm going to have Pete take her off the flightline for twelve hours, maybe get us some rack time…" Hiccup nearly tripped, and Astrid had to duck to avoid his oxygen hose.

"Woah, sorry." Hiccup continued. "Anyway, I'm going to hole up in here tonight to help out. The whole squadron's like this, and we're starting to rack up avionics failures and…" He lumbered towards the workbench.

Astrid punched him in the arm.

"Ow." Hiccup tilted his head. "What was that for?"

"I thought you _died… _I though we were dead back there!"

Hiccup gave a little shrug. "Sorry. I was distracted by the radar picture. You should've seen it. Baby nukes popping off left and right, dust clouds all over the place. I'll try not to let it happen again."

Astrid put her hands on her hips. "You'd better not!"

"Well, it's not like it would have mattered all that much. Mission comes first, whether we're dead, dying or puking, and you'd have had to stick around either way. It was hardly time-critical information." Hiccup reasoned.

"You…" _You scared me half to death. I haven't been that terrified for anyone since…_

Hiccup gave her a quizzical look.

Astrid shook her head. "Right." She exhaled sharply. "So… I'm going to get dinner. Would you like me to get you anything?"

=O=

Astrid bagged the covered aluminium bowls of noodles, fishballs, and dumplings, and weaved her way through the half-empty tables of the Officer's Club.

The whole squadron had been pulled off the line, and by all accounts, the rest of the wing was scrambling to cover for them. Astrid didn't particularly mind. The way she saw it, she'd flown her fair share of combat, and hadn't gotten more than four consecutive hours of sleep in a week. Half a day offline sounded pretty good.

"Hey, Astrid!" Ruffnut's voice echoed through the restaurant. "Come over here! We've got an extra seat!"

"Sorry, Ruff! Gotta get these noodles back to the shelter! Hiccup and the crew need dinner!"

It was more of a late-night/pre-dawn snack, really, but wars hadn't been fought according to human mealtimes since the Middle Ages.

"Oh, come on! I'll throw in a piece of meatloaf!"

Astrid, exasperated, marched over to her friend, carefully placing the paper bags on a chair. She picked up a pair of chopsticks, and practically swallowed the meatloaf whole. God, she was starving.

The scramble alert blared to life.

"You?" Ruffnut asked. Most of ADC was on high alert after the so-called threshold-nuclear strike, braced for the Indian retaliation.

"No. My bird's offline for the next twelve hours – and so am I."

"Ditto." Ruffnut stared out the window into the night. "Lucky, lucky, us."

Astrid washed the remnants of her meatloaf down with a glass of water. "Okay, Ruff. What are you doing here? Isn't TAC dispersing?" Scattered across dozens of civilian airfields, the Air Force would be much harder to attack in the event of continued nuclear hostilities.

"SAC is getting first pick of dispersal bases, and Berk's way out of Scud range and under a missile shield to boot. We've at the back of a very long queue." She shrugged. "Fishlegs just left with the food, but I wanted a little something extra. Girl, you have gotta tell me what nuclear war looks like."

"The noodles are getting cold, Ruff. But… the boss is saying it went well – so I guess we knocked out most of their nuclear missiles. Try to stay away from nuclear SAM sites. They'll kill your Phantom for sure."

"I see your nuclear SAM and raise you one short-range nuclear attack rocket."

"Amen to that, if they let you use nuclear attack rockets." Astrid shrugged.

Ruffnut leaned forward. "So how are things with Hiccup?"

"Fine." Astrid growled. "We got through to each other. Status quo ante restored, and we're killing it in the air. Now I really gotta go." She stood, and turned to leave.

"_Just _that, Astrid?"

"Yes." Astrid hissed. "What else should I have told him? We're in the middle of a nuclear war. Anything… irrelevant can wait until after. So can this conversation. Goodbye."

"There might not be an after!"

Astrid drifted back over to the table. "That's quitter talk, and you know it."

"Astrid!" Ruffnut snapped. "I just want to talk to a friend one more time. Sit down for a minute."

Astrid sighed, and took a seat. "Noodles'll turn to mush." She mumbled.

Ruffnut ignored her, and pressed her palms together. "Back in Siberia… you showed me the ropes. I was a terrified rookie flying her first sortie in the last weeks of a dumbass war, and you were a not-rookie with three months in-theater and twenty-five sorties on her hat. I… want to tell you… how much you helped me. It's mushy as heck, but I really want to say it, because… I'm not sure I'll see you again."

"We'll be fine if we do our jobs, and save the hugs until after we win this."

Ruffnut cradled her head in her hands. "Astrid, when you were a kid, did they ever read you the Wizard of Oz? You know, yellow sidewalk, ruby slippers, emerald city, all that crap?"

Astrid nodded impatiently.

"Did they ever teach you the moral of the Wizard of Oz?"

"The joy is in the journey." Astrid snapped. "What does that have to do with it?"

"It's life, Astrid! It's life! You keep thinking that oh, I'll do this and that after I finish this first thing, and everything'll be fine if I just put in 110% at every step and do one thing at a time! But one day you look up and realize that you've lost half your life doing something stupid."

Ruffnut gave a long, tired sigh. "Life is meant to be lived. Not solved."

"Are you sure that's not the aircrew awareness pills talking? Or the sleep deprivation?" Astrid cocked an eyebrow, even as she tried her best not to think about what Ruffnut was trying to say.

The Air Force had always been a little too coy about what was _actually _in those little blue pills. Of course Hiccup could wait.

"It's time management, Astrid. You need to leave time for the other things – career development opportunities, relationships, family, because a lot of things… can't be put off. Doors close. Opportunities vanish. People die. Some… retard on the other side of an ocean plays politics, some idiot down the road does something stupid, and your whole life goes out the window."

Astrid's heart fluttered, and her mouth ran dry. She shook her head, and forced a hard edge into her voice. "Don't talk to me about losing people, Ruff. You don't know me."

"You know, Astrid, I was so happy for you when I heard about your trip to Atomland. I thought you were finally living a little. But we're running short on time, and there's no point arguing. So come over here." Tears welled in Ruffnut's eyes, and Astrid smiled stiffly as she was enveloped in a crushing hug.

_Would it really be so bad? To talk to Hiccup... now? We have a few hours, don't we? More than enough time to... _

In the corner of Astrid's eye, outside the window, an almost imperceptible flash lit up the night.

Astrid stared intently out the window, seizing the distraction to restore order to an unruly mind. Lightning? It was a good thing she expected to be driving back to the hardened shelter.

A second flash followed the first.

"You sound just like my mother." Astrid gave Ruffnut a pat on the back. Perhaps she could catch up with Ruffnut in the car.

_And maybe after that I could... _

No. There would be no "after that". She would get back to the shelter, finish dinner, catch a few hours of sleep, and await orders as usual. She had a job to do.

The earsplitting whine of the air raid siren ripped through the room. Across the room, people stood, eyes turned towards the exit as they considered how to respond to the alarm. Berk was one of the largest and most well-defended airbases out West, ringed with SAMs, fighter patrol boxes, and a thousand kilometers of heavily defended airspace. By contrast, the Indian Air Force was a disorganized, second-rate mess, kitted out with a hodgepodge of Western and Soviet aircraft two generations out of date.

But ballistic missiles had flight times of under ten minutes.

People abandoned their meals, and began calmly moving towards the door.

A sharp crack echoed across the room, followed by a faint, dull rumble, drowning out the whine of the air raid siren.

"What the hell?" Someone whispered.

The flow of people stopped.

Ice ran through Astrid's veins. "Oh, crap."

A dazzling flash turned everything outside the restaurant a stark white, casting momentary shadows throughout the establishment.

Astrid dove under the table, shoved her face against the trembling wall, and curled herself into the tightest ball she could even as she dragged Ruffnut down with her.

"DUCK AND COVER!"

An earth-shattering explosion blasted through the Officer's Club, shattering glass windows and sending razor-sharp shards of glass flying across the tables. Fine china, glass bottles, and tableware went flying, and dust fell from the ceiling above. An unearthly howl echoed across the Qingzang Plateau as an atomic wind followed the blast wave outward before suddenly reversing direction, sucking air back into the fireball as it ascendied into the night sky.

Screams filled the restaurant as shrapnel tore through those who had failed to duck in time or had foolishly tried to look for the source of the explosion. A pilot flopped to the floor, blood pouring from his neck as he clutched his face in agony.

"OH, CRAP! OH, CRAP!"

The roar of the explosion diminished, and Ruffnut began to scramble to her feet, but Astrid held her down.

"STAY DOWN!"

Another flash tore through the night, causing the building to shudder once more. In the light of the nuclear flash, Astrid caught a glimpse of the glass and porcelain shards embedded in the pilot's badly cut face as he rolled over, the pilot's bloodcurdling scream etching the image into her memory forever.

The wall – the table – the cement floor was quaking, rolling with the energy of a nuclear blast.

_It's ground shock. The bastards are walking groundbursts across the runway. _

_Think like Hiccup, Astrid. _

_Twelve….thirteen… _

Another blast rolled over them, and dust fell from the ceiling.

A third flash illuminated the restaurant, and the ground shook once more.

A third rumble followed.

"Into the toilet!"

Astrid dragged Ruffnut into the toilet, and locked the door behind them.

=O=

They stayed in the cramped toilet, in complete darkness, for what seemed like hours.

"Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap."

Astrid tried to wrap her head around what had just happened. Berk, one of the most heavily defended airbases out West, had just been attacked by a second-rate air force. Successfully. With nuclear weapons.

"How the frick did they get here?" Ruffnut asked. "A Sukhoi has barely enough range to cross the frickkin' Himalayas, and we plastered the Indian Northeast well and good! And when did they get nuclear freefall bombs!"

Ruffnut swore. "We… gave them those light bombers, didn't we?"

But the Indian Air Force's light bombers had JGAF-standard bomb lugs and fusing connectors. They would have had to modify…

The magnitude of the military disaster that could be unfolding hit her like a sack of bricks.

Caught on the ground, the scores of B-52s and F-111s that had seemed so overwhelming so many weeks ago were nothing more than big, juicy targets for nuclear firepower.

How the heck had they gotten past ADC?

Oh, god. What if they had hit the _other_ airbases as well?

_Get a grip, Astrid. Get a grip. If they had been serious about taking out Berk, the Indians would have used something bigger than… whatever they just used. _

Ruffnut coughed. "Astrid?"

_Think like Hiccup. If they'd used a megatonner, you'd be dead by now. They used small weapons – under fifty kilotons, maybe even under ten, which was why you saw multiple flashes. They tried to score multiple hits on Berk because their nukes were tiny._

_Tiny my ass. Twenty kilotons in the middle of the apron would have killed every bomber on-base._

_We're not in the middle of a massive nuclear exchange. You'll see Hiccup again. _

_Hiccup! _

"Hiccup." Astrid said. "I need to find Hiccup."

Astrid wondered whether they would still be able to fly.

_Berk has three oversized runways. Three bombs. Something will be operational. We can fly off the taxiways if need be. _

Astrid grabbed the door as an urge to find her backseater overcame her, before jerking her arm away from the knob in shock.

_Think like Hiccup. If he's still with Toothless, he'll be fine. He's in a shelter. Blast and fallout proof._

_Please be okay. Please be okay. He's got to be okay. He needs to be okay. He needs to be okay, or I'll never get to... He needs to be okay. I'll kill him if he's not. _

Ruffnut pulled her friend back as a turbojet screamed overhead. "Astrid, are you okay? We need to stay put."

Astrid didn't hear a single word.

_You're not fallout-proof. They used groundbursts. Groundbursts mean lots of fallout. Wait out the worst of it. _

_Oh god, Hiccup! _

"We're… west of the aprons and runways, right? The wind mostly blows east off the plateau. Fallout falls east." Astrid said to nobody in particular. "Unless they dropped a bomb west of us, we should be able to make it in a bit."

"Astrid, Hiccup's going to be fine. Fishlegs, on the other hand..." Ruffnut choked down a sob.

Beneath the popcorn crackle of secondary explosions, Astrid could make out the faint crack-crack-crack of small arms fire.

"Astrid, we should stay put." Ruffnut had ducked under the sink again.

The crack-crack-crack of small arms fire intensified.

_Saboteurs! That's how they did it! The bastards had help! _

_Hiccup's out there! He won't last five minutes against men with guns! _

Astrid checked her watch. Thirty minutes. As long as they hadn't dropped any nukes west of Berk – and if the Indians had had to evade any Pacifican air defenses at all, they'd have come from the south – she'd be fine.

"I have to find Hiccup!"

_This I can handle. This I can control. I can still save him if I make it across the apron in one piece. _

"Astrid? Astrid! You aren't going out there, are you? Astrid!"

There was no reply. Astrid was gone.

=O=

_Author's note: Here we go! This climactic chapter was broken into two parts because it was getting way too long. The wait will not be long - Part Two will be coming out within a day or three._

_Additional thanks must be given to CajunBear73 and OechsnerC for inspiring the way this chapter opened. It greatly improved the flow. _


	32. Love on the Nuclear Battlefield (2)

Thanks to CajunBear73, OechsnerC, Lady Haddock, TheDeathlyRider2287, and Atomicsub927 for their reviews, commentary and input.

=O=

Chapter 32: Love on the Nuclear Battlefield (2)

Astrid gripped her steering wheel tightly with gloved hands, feeling every bump and knoll in the grasslands as her little Ford tore across the parched environs of Berk. Through a shattered windscreen, a roaring, frigid slipstream ripped at her gas mask and tore at the chemical hood of her nuclear, biological, and chemical protection suit, obtained by insisting to an Air Force Security trooper that she was desperately needed on the flightline. Sweat, trapped inside the rubberized charcoal-lined coating of the suit, ran in rivulets across her forehead and down her back, pooling uncomfortably in her underwear and boots.

Through eyes stinging with sweat, and goggles fogged by hot breath, Astrid gazed upon hell.

Against a featureless, dust-filled night sky, thick palls of black smoke billowed skywards from burning lakes of kerosene. A soft orange glow filled the eastern sky, marking where the wind had fanned the flames, shifted the smoke, and scattered the fallout.

The orderly rows of bombers, tankers, and transports that had once carpeted the central apron were no more. A smouldering radioactive hole, the size of a football field, now dominated a plain of hardened concrete, surrounded by misshapen berms of rubble and fields of burning, dust-choked duralumin wreckage.

As she neared the south apron, further from the crater, Astrid could make out the outlines of dozens of wrecked B-52s, sucked from their retvetments and smashed to pieces like toys. A tanker aircraft lay split in two, its halves stark against walls of flame from a sea of fiercely burning kerosene. As damage control crews desperately - and perhaps unwisely - tried to save the aircraft that remained, pickups and boxy foam trucks raced across the apron, skidding to a halt just outside the worst of the fallout to send rivers of foam and water high into the air.

Another pall of smoke rose from the South Runway, another radioactive crater at its heart.

The Geiger counter in the passenger seat clicked noisily.

Astrid shuddered. Fallout.

Fallout: Radioactive dust, the pulverized remains of planes, concrete, dirt, and men turned radioactive, blasted to ash, thrown into the sky, and scattered to the winds by a nuclear bomb.

Fallout: _Deadly_ radioactive dust, glowing with rays and in colors invisible to the human eye, rays and colors that could shine through skin, clothing, metal, and thin concrete as it if did not exist – and burn, maim, and kill delicate human bodies in their path.

Fallout was drifting across the airfield and settling into every nook and cranny.

The crack-crack-crack of small arms fire drew nearer as the thin grass of the Qingzang Highlands scrunched beneath her wheels. A little security bunker, spewing tracers, came into view. She killed her engine.

There had been only two survivors when the Indians had overrun the navigation beacon. They weren't overrunning Berk – not on her watch.

Gosh, that had been a lifetime ago. Berk had been safe, the country hadn't been cowering in fallout shelters, and her biggest problem had been having Hiccup for a backseater.

_Hiccup. _Get to him, save him, shoot anyone in her way. A simple plan. A good plan.

The radiation meter whined in alarm. Astrid stopped, looked around, and backed away from an unusual looking jagged rock in the distance – probably a chunk of airfield concrete, catapulted across the sky by the groundburst. If her radiation meter was any indication, it was _hot hot hot._

A hotspot – an area where concentrated bits of fallout had accumulated.

Right now, walking across that piece of concrete would probably give her a fatal dose – or even give her immediate radiation burns or kill her outright on contact. As the worst of the radiation decayed over the next day or so (and it always did, because the rapid decay and high activity of the radionuclides was _why_ it was so harmful), she might get sick if she used the blasted thing as a pillow for twelve hours. After a few years or so, building her house on top of the concrete chunk might marginally increase her risk of cancer – after a century, perhaps not even that, depending on which scientists were right.

An angry round whizzed by her head, and Astrid fell flat on her belly, sending her radiation meter chattering. "Don't shoot! I'm a pilot! I just need a weapon!"

An Air Force Security trooper, two white bands emblazoned on his helmet and a gas mask over his face, shone a flashlight in her face and waved her into the fighting position. "What the heck are you doing out here?!"

"I need to get to my squadron! Give me a gun!" Her eyes flitted across the piles of garbage that littered the position, and settled on a rusty old carbine next to a stack of coke bottles, which for all appearances had been lying out here since World War II.

Astrid's eyes widened in recognition. _Déjà vu. _"I can shoot that! I could shoot that with my eyes closed! Give me the gun!"

"We've got movement!" Another Security trooper pointed into the darkness, and a medium machine gun clattered as a steady stream of tracers disappeared into the smoke-filled night.

A third trooper gave Astrid a quick glance as he slid a magazine into his rifle. "Sarge, just give her the gun! She sure as hell doesn't look like one of them!"

"Could be a Russian!" The machine-gunner opined.

"You're kiddin' me, right? Movement two o'clock!" More tracers were swallowed up by the darkness.

The Sergeant swore, and handed her the carbine. "Weapons tight! Weapons tight, people! Don't shoot unless you're sure it's enemy!"

Astrid hefted the familiar shape – a bit lighter than she remembered _– _and looked down her sights across the grasslands towards the concertina fence in the distance, just barely perceptible in the faint orange glow of one hundred burning multimillion-dollar warplanes.

"Movement on the fence!" The machine-gunner let loose a short burst, and everyone followed his lead, filling the night with yet more tracers. Astrid, her night vision ruined, shook her head.

The Sergeant went to the radio, and Astrid frowned as an unusual sensation welled in her gut. "What's happening?"

"Fifth columnists! Saboteurs! Commandoes! They're everywhere! I heard shooting from the main gate!" The rifleman nervously scanned the fence.

"Classic one-two punch! They scope out the place for the nuclear bombers and slip inside while everyone's distracted! They did it to our outposts, they're doing it here!" The machine-gunner opined. "Prolly got nuclear demo charges to blow whatever the bombers missed sky-high!"

"Say again, reactor two?" The Sarge spoke into the microphone.

"Oh god, they got the reactor!" The rifleman glanced warily in the direction of the lake, where small pebble-bed reactors slurped coolant from its chilly waters.

"They could break containment and irradiate the base! Make it even more unusable!" The machine-gunner speculated.

Astrid shook her head as she examined the Security troopers. "Not gonna happen. That's a meter of concrete they'll have to break."

This was not where she needed to be. This was not where Hiccup was.

The crackle of gunfire was now overpowering. She glimpsed the hardened shelters as the smoke momentarily cleared. "I… need to get to my squadron! Cover me!"

The machine-gunner nodded, and Astrid shot onto the grasslands as the machine-gunner opened fire, covering the night in tracers. She made it to her car without setting off her radiation meter, ducked inside, and started the engine.

Astrid was halfway to the hulking hillocks of the hardened aircraft shelters when illumination rounds _finally_ screamed skyward, bathing the grasslands in an unearthly white glow. Rifle rounds cracked across her Ford, and she stopped just short of her shelter before rolling out of her vehicle onto the hard concrete tarmac. She looked around for debris, and checked her meter. The meter clicked wildly as she approached the ground.

Groundshine. Settled radioactive dust.

_No more lying down on the ground once you're in the hot zone… _

Just east of her, a massive column of smoke and dust stretched skywards from the burning south apron.

_That hot zone. _

More machine-gun fire cut through the night.

In the distance, Astrid caught a glimpse of three men, stooped low, running evasively towards the hangar. _Not again. Not again! Hiccup's in there!_

The illumination rounds died, and Astrid frantically tried to find _the sappers_ as darkness reclaimed the grasslands, half-expecting to be cut down by enemy fire. _Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. They'll get him. They'll get him for sure. _

A shape moved through the smoke. _Don't hesitate. _

_Stance. Aim. _

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

Astrid got to her feet, and charged towards the side door.

A shape emerged from the doorway. Astrid raised her carbine...

...and put it down as Gobber, masks cradled in his arms, walked past the radiation-proof bend. "Astrid! What's going on out there?!"

"Where's Hiccup?!"

"Decontamination crew, edge of south apron! Now we need some extra hands on…" Gobber turned around, but Astrid was long gone.

She drove towards the south apron. Even with her mask on, the smell of burning metal and jet fuel was intense, and, even from a kilometer away, she could feel the heat from the inferno of aluminium and kerosene through her rubberized suit.

A technician in a full suit drove past in a tractor, pulling a lightly damaged B-52 away from the blast zone. Water dripped from its wings and onto the tarmac as it lumbered past.

He said he'd follow her to hell and back.

She'd be darned if she didn't return the favor.

Astrid slung her carbine, and ran out onto the tarmac.

Next to a massive B-52 bomber, a slim man in a bulky NBC suit led a gang of maintainers as they sprayed soapy water all over the aircraft's surface. Rivulets of contaminated water spilled onto the ground and ran off into a foamy gutter beyond.

Big yellow radiation warning signs were everywhere – below the plane, on the wet tarmac, and especially around the gutter.

"Clean the top! Clean the top! Engines! Okay! Hosed off! Mop crew up! Wipe the bird down!"

"HICCUP!" Astrid ran towards him, arms outstretched, laughing manically under her mask. Hiccup was okay. Her world was radioactive and on fire, but Hiccup was safe, and that made everything better. Everything was okay.

He crossed his gloved, suited arms, warning her back. "Astrid? What the heck are you doing here?! Stay behind the signs! These birds got caked in radioactive dust from the groundburst, and when we wash it off, all the stuff goes in the water and in the gutter! It's all over my suit, too!"

This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair.

Astrid shook her head, and stepped back. The meter ticked appreciably when she pointed it at the gutter. Those would be hotspots someday. The gutters would be dangerous to sleep in for weeks, and uninhabitable for years – not that anyone would live in the gutters. Radioactive dust, relatively safe when dispersed over a wide area, might collect to higher levels in bends and cracks in the gutter, or the gutter might dry up, and the dust scattered by the breeze once more. Biologically compatible radioisotopes might accumulate in cockroaches as they rooted through the gutter – and in the birds that ate them, although the miniscule scale of this nuclear attack meant this was unlikely to be a major hazard.

Someone would probably end up ripping out the whole concrete gutter and burying it in a hole. Burial would probably be far cheaper than trying to decontaminate the darned thing. Decontamination would involve washing the radioactive dust out of every nook and cranny and sandblasting the surface until it was clean as a whistle, which seemed a lot of bother for a cheap concrete gutter.

"And stay away from that pile of debris! And the bulldozer! We lost a man trying to drive it! The concrete and metal debris is the worst! All hot!" He pointed to a mangled pile of airplane parts and rubble in the corner.

Astrid eyed her meter. It was all hot. All of it. More radioactive scrap for the hole.

A gang of maintainers began running big mops across the contaminated airframe, hoping to get rid of whatever dust was left on the aircraft. The interior of the bird would have to be decontaminated separately.

She stared into his eyes behind the holes in his gas mask – the only part of him she could see. It was more than enough. Hiccup was _safe_ – for a broad definition of the term – and that was enough to bring tears of joy to her eyes.

Her mouth was dry again. She forced the _embarrassingly unprofessional _words from her mouth. "Hiccup… I'm sorry for making you wait! For shoving you around!"

"What?"

The words wouldn't come out. Not in that order.

She couldn't fail now. She _had _to tell him... something. Anything!

"You care about me a lot! I… care about you too! A lot!"

A truck drove by, and skidded to a halt in front of the decontamination point. The meter ticked gently. Men plunged mops into huge troughs of contaminated water.

Astrid scanned Hiccup's gas mask, hoping to catch a hint of a reaction. He was usually so easy to read. Was this how Hiccup felt all the time? Watching faces, trying to figure out what was going on behind them? Worrying, wondering, hoping?

He wasn't saying anything. How long had it been?

"Now? Now's really not the time, Astrid! SOMEONE GET THAT TRUCK!"

"Yes it is, Hiccup! If not now, when? I…" She... really couldn't say it, couldn't she? It was far too embarrassing to say.

But she'd tell him. She'd tell him now. She'd tell him if she had to move her jaw herself...

That was a plan.

She raised a gloved hand to her gas mask, and blew him a kiss.

Hiccup looked a little unsteady, but quickly regained his composure as the B-52 was towed out of the decontamination area. "Okay, Astrid. Go help with the hose!" He returned the blown kiss with an awkward derivative before checking his dosimeter badge. "I'll be over safety limits in thirty minutes!"

Astrid ran over to the truck, and grabbed a hose, taking good care to wash off the wheels.

She stood up to see if she could decontaminate the inside, and nearly vomited into her mask at the sight of dozens of badly burned men and women, their flesh a motted mass of charred blacks, raw reds, and bone whites, groaning in agony.

Someone else had already vomited. The corrugated metal decking was covered in patches of vomit, pools of… brown goo, and red-and-black bits of what could only be human flesh. Burn and radiation casualties.

Fallout is worse if it gets into open wounds. Well, these people were nothing _but_ open wounds.

Dear god, had it been like this on the ground in India, sixty thousand feet below them?

"ASTRID, BACK OFF! THEY'RE ALL CONTAMINATED! MEDICAL DECONTAM IS ON THE LEFT! GO! GO!"

She choked down more vomit, and stepped off the cleaned truck.

She'd dropped low-yield weapons all over India. This was payback.

She'd pay back the payback tenfold, if need be. This was war.

The all-clear rang out across the base, and the PA blared to life. "Cease fire! Cease fire! Security troops, secure all weapons. We are not under ground attack, I repeat; we are not under ground attack. You people have been shooting at ghosts!"

Astrid thought of the man she had gunned down outside the hardened shelter, and turned pale as bile tried to claw its way out of her throat.

She gulped down the bile, hopped off the back of the truck, and grabbed the hose as the next truck heaved into position.

=O=

_Author's note: Ta-da! As promised, Love on the Nuclear Battlefield, where the sine qua non of nuclear warfare - the earthquake, wind, fire, radiation, and fallout - that distinguish nuclear warfare from its pedestrian conventional counterparts are on full display at the same time love occurs!_

_Additional thanks must go to TheDeathlyRider2287 for detecting a missile apogee error in Ch 20 - according to the AlternateWars website, ballistic missile apogees are about a quarter of maximum range, not half._


	33. Tit-for-Tat

Thanks to A, LadyHaddock, TheDeathlyRider2287, OechsnerC, CajunBear73, Atomicsub927, and everyone else for their reviews, input, and commentary.

=O=

Chapter 33: Tit-for-Tat

Situation Room

Portland National Capital Region, Joint Government of the Pacific

The Situation Room buzzed as reports from Berk poured in.

The Indian use of nuclear freefall bombs had been a near-total surprise. The Air Force had known about the Indian bombers, and had found the force dispersed at airbases around the country to avoid airstrikes, but since the Soviets had not flown any of their more modern bombers into India, it had always been assumed that the Indian Air Force did not possess nuclear weapons, and that ADC would be fully capable of shooting down the obsolete bombers in the event that they tried to penetrate Pacifican airspace.

Plus, everyone reasoned, if the Indians had a semi-survivable dispersed nuclear bomber force, they would surely have announced it on All India Radio for deterrent effect.

Apparently, the Indians and Soviets thought about these sorts of things differently.

"Sir, an updated damage assessment is in. It's… not as bad in some ways, and worse in others." The attaché flipped open a notebook. "Berk was hit by three tactical nuclear weapons of about five kilotons each. Two of the airbase's runways are completely intact, and over half of the aircraft appear repairable – light blast damage, mostly. Unfortunately, virtually all aircraft caught outside hardened shelters will require extensive decontamination and maintenance to clear them for flight operations – it'll take upwards of a week to get many of them back in the air. In operational terms, we've lost upwards of a hundred aircraft – including two whole wings of B-52s and a wing of tankers – a major blow to our airpower in the region."

The President swallowed. A week. The industrialized world could be a smoking, radiating ruin in a week.

"Casualties?" The Secretary asked.

"Light, considering the firepower employed. Base commander estimates two thousand dead and wounded." The attaché shrugged. "We're still not sure how big the Indian attack was, since we believe several aircraft shot down over the Himalayas last night were part of the offensive, but three survived to weapons release over Berk."

The Secretary nodded. "Now we decide how best to retaliate, Mr. President. Given the restraint the Indians have demonstrated in their retaliation, I believe a measured response is called for."

The Advisor shook her head. "You've gotta be kidding me."

"Let's hear what the military men have to say." The President said.

The attaché propped a fresh stack of sheets onto his easel. "As we discussed previously, we have three options. Option One is to take the hit and continue the war conventionally – that is, with no further nuclear weapons use. We were winning the conventional war, and the loss of tactical aircraft from Berk, while painful, will not materially affect our chances of victory. This was probably intentional on the part of the Soviets, to discourage us from further nuclear weapons use."

"Option Two involves a simple retaliation in kind against a selected Indian airbase. Our recommendation is Option Two, which will service the needs of retaliation while, by demonstrating restraint, provide a path to continue the war conventionally, as per Option One."

The Advisor scoffed. "It won't do jack shit to the Indian nuclear force."

"Which is the point, ma'am." The attaché flipped to the next slide. "Option Three is a massive disarming strike against Indian fighter and bomber bases, as well as Indian naval installations believed to house nuclear weapons. India has over a hundred dispersal airbases for its remaining light bombers. These will be attacked with a mix of low and medium yield weapons in surgical nuclear strikes. Runways in densely populated areas will be hit with subkiloton weapons or avoided entirely, whereas rural airfields will be hit with medium-sized weapons up to 70 kilotons – large weapons will be avoided to minimize fallout. Low-yield standoff weapons will be used to destroy nuclear air defenses. Due to restrictions on large defense suppression weapons, aircrew losses will be heavy."

The President gawked.

The attaché caught the President's expression. "We believe this strike will cause minimal civilian casualties – within one order of magnitude of the collateral damage inflicted by our destruction of the Indian strategic missile force. We will be very careful. This is what we call a 'constrained disarming attack', where we accept higher aircrew losses and limited destruction of enemy forces to spare civilians and avoid escalating the conflict further."

_So up to ten times more civilian casualties. _

"We also have an Option Three Plus which uses high-yield groundbursts and maximal medium-and-high-yield defense suppression to minimize aircrew losses and maximize target destruction. Between nuclear SAMs and the strike on Berk, bomber losses have been relatively heavy; if we expect to escalate to SIOP, we _will_ feel the losses."

The President furrowed his brow. "To be honest, Richard, the Indian retaliation seems remarkably proportionate. We dropped a hundred kilotons of nuclear firepower, they dropped fifteen. Casualties are a little higher on their side. They've lost most of their strategic deterrent; we've lost a hundred tactical aircraft. If they don't use nuclear weapons again, I'm inclined to let this one slide myself. Option One all the way."

The Secretary was incredulous. "Out of the question."

"We're winning the ground war. What do we gain by escalating?" The President shrugged.

The Advisor groaned. The Secretary walked over to the easel. "Sir… our strategic posture aims to deter our enemies from military action by the threat of escalating to overwhelming nuclear force. While we might have been willing to let slide Indian use of nuclear SAMs, we simply cannot do the same for this tactical nuclear strike. A failure to retaliate destroys the credibility of our threat to escalate, which underpins our nuclear doctrine of escalation dominance.

"Doctrine was written for war, not war for doctrine." The President was incredulous. "Richard, you've been spending way too much time with Janet. This isn't Harvard. This is war! They'll launch nukes against our troops on the ground or against the Navy, and what will we do then?"

"We have the advantage in tactical nuclear warfare. The Indians don't have anything like our nuclear rocket launchers. The Army will hold the disputed territories, nukes or no." The Secretary opined.

"Escalate further, of course! Nuke the Indian Army on the East Pak border, and threaten their army on the West Pak border unless they back down. SASCOM has the relevant target lists." The Advisor deadpanned. "A clear message must be sent to Moscow."

The President glared at his National Security Advisor. "I'm not going to risk the lives of tens of thousands of Pacificans – no, _millions _of Pacificans – to prove your cockamamie think-tank theories right! That's how everyone screwed up in World War I!"

During WWI, mobilization schedules and railway timetables, wedded to excessively rigid war plans and alliance commitments, had led diplomatic efforts by the nose. Those war plans, if stopped halfway, would have utterly ruined the military postures of the belligerents. The momentum of mobilization had thus overwhelmed all efforts to stop the war, leading to a general conflagration that killed millions, lasted four years, and destroyed the European order.

Rigidity had killed millions once before. The President was adamant that rigidity would not kill millions once again.

"Sir, failing to retaliate will set a terrible precedent for future conflicts with the Soviets. We need to be firm, and establish deterrence by adequate retaliation." The Secretary began to pace.

"I will not waste lives to prove a _principle_, or set an _example_ for future generations. That's… utterly insane!" The President's jaw dropped.

"Oh, can it, Richard! It's nothing so abstract!" The Advisor yelled at the Secretary. "The message we've been sending our allies and our enemies for the last ten years is simple. You attack us with _anything_, and we blow you up with nuclear weapons – and we'll do it, because we can _win_ a nuclear war. Don't even try to fight back, because if you do, we _end _you."

She picked up a half-empty cup of coffee. "Now the Reds have dropped a nuclear weapon on Pacifican soil, and we aren't blowing them up with nuclear weapons. What are our allies supposed to think now? That we'll turn turtle the minute a single nuclear bomb lands in the Pacific?" She took a sip of coffee. "We've got enough problems convincing them we'll trade Shanghai for Paris as it is. Fail to retaliate, and Paris, Rome, and Bonn will seek accommodations with Moscow."

She put down her cup. "Fail to retaliate, and Western Europe goes Red."

The President shook his head. "Bullshit. Western Europe is worth far more than India. And this great nation is worth more still."

He stood. "My decision is final. We will reopen negotiations with the Indians and Soviets, and we will offer to _publically_ guarantee the Indian nuclear weapons program. We will offer economic and technical sweeteners, and we will offer to _publically _remove long-range missiles from Turkey. It's just not worth it."

The Advisor threw her hands into the air. "Seriously, Enlai? One little nuke and we fall to pieces? How the hell are we supposed to negotiate from a position of weakness? How the hell are we supposed to make the enemy fear massive and overwhelming retaliation? I thought we were in this together!"

The President nodded. "Consider the dragon. The dragon can grow or shrink, extend or retract." He folded his arms. "The dragon is _flexible_, and knows to withdraw when the situation demands it. This… Soviet probe was a face-saving gesture on their part. A nuclear olive branch. Their… response was well below the level of violence we employed. They've stared into the abyss just as we have. To answer their clarity with escalation to mass murder would be… unreasonable."

He stared down his subordinates. "And… Dr. Soong, you are _my_ National Security Advisor. You work for _me_. You too, Richard." He sighed. "So do your jobs. Get the damned Soviets and Indians together and hammer out a goddamn deal without blowing us all up!"

"Sir… consider this. What if our negotiations fail?" The Advisor asked.

The President smiled. "Consider it yourself. You know as well as I that we can't find all the tactical nuclear artillery rockets that menace our forward troops. At least half of them will fly whether or not we knock out every runway in India tonight. The only difference is the possibility of the Indians flying their antiquated bombers out to menace our cities – a threat I was once assured was extremely limited."

The attaché spoke. "India's Canberra fleet was about 200 aircraft at the start of hostilities. We hit several major dispersal bases during Operation Avalanche. We do not believe the Indians to still be capable of an attack substantially larger than the one on Berk. The total hazard remains substantial, but… with additional forces, we could probably intercept most of them before the light bombers can finish their one-way trips to major cities. We might lose a city or two at most, and casualties will depend on what weapons the Canberras have been modified for."

"See?" The President shrugged. "The risk is acceptable. If we don't negotiate, we wipe out the Indian strategic force and our forward troops get nuked. If negotiations fail, we wipe out the Indian strategic force and they nuke our forward troops. But if negotiations succeed, everyone goes home. We have nothing to lose. We negotiate."

The Secretary was already working the phones.

Across the glittering city of Portland, phones began to ring at the Soviet Embassy, the Bureau of Foreign affairs, and the Indian Representative's room at the British Embassy.

The President, exhausted, gave himself the luxury of a brief nap. Knowing how the damned diplomats had worked over the past two weeks, it would be at least an hour before negotiations could be arranged. It was going to be a long night.

Two offices down the hall, the Advisor entered her office, and locked the door.

She reached for her phone, and put in a call to the number General Bludvist had given her.

This was not going to work. The Administration _still _didn't know what it was willing to concede, and if the intelligence outlook was to be believed, the pinprick Soviet retaliation had in no way mollified Indian calls for vengeance. If General Bludvist's reports were accurate, the situation in India was still spiraling out of control, and the best way to control it was with medium and high-yield nuclear weapons – anything less was fraught with risk.

In the event that negotiations broke down – which was almost a certainty at this point, regardless of the President's optimism on the matter – Drago needed to be ready to clear the entire Indian nuclear force – tactical and strategic – from the subcontinent. She'd make sure the President saw things her way, when it came to that point. And with Drago's force locked into that posture, there was no way the President could afford to choose a less effective option.

The Advisor took a sip of coffee as the line connected.

=O=

The Soviet Major drove to a stop in front of the dispersal site. Scenes from hell greeted him for the fifth time in five hours.

Where once had stood orderly revetments filled with Scud missiles and bunkers full of rocket fuel, a massive inferno blazed, sending palls of smoke into the night sky. Ignited by nuclear fire, and fed first by lakes of burning rocket fuel and then by the forest beyond, the massive fire seemed to have reached its limits for now.

He passed an aid station – a fancy name for a tarp and a gang of ash-covered soldiers in nuclear warfare gear. In the firelight, badly burned missileers, technicians, and security troops lay in agony, their flesh angry charred patches of white and red, alternatively screaming for their mothers or laying in silence. More men had fallen to flying tree branches, glass and other debris. But the Pacificans had used a low-yield weapon – and that meant radiation casualties. Dozens of men lay gasping as they vomited their guts out, and pools of diarrhea collected at the edge of one tarp, where blind, badly burned men, variously comatose or delirious with radiation poisoning, awaited their inevitable fates. Even through his gas mask, the stench was awful.

He could hardly tell the Soviets and Indians apart anymore. In suffering and death, all men had at last become equal.

He jotted down the status of site six in his notebook, fumbling through his rubberized gloves. Of the tactical nuclear weapons, he had so far found nine Scuds and over a dozen FROGs. The smaller tactical weapons had been much harder for the Pacificans to find and destroy. But even a few of the larger missiles had escaped destruction. Eight SS-4 reloads – the sole remaining elements of his command, hidden in a repair depot in the shadow of a cliff in a secluded valley – had miraculously survived. None of the huge SS-5 missiles had survived.

The Pacifican strike had been very good, but it had not been perfect. Missiles in depots and even a few pads had been missed. They had used too little firepower.

He closed his notebook. He was in charge of the whole detachment now. The Major took a moment to mourn his superior and good friend – the Colonel was missing and presumed dead, his headquarters a smoking, radiating ruin. He looked around for the local battery commander, but he was nowhere to be found.

So many of his friends and comrades had perished. Gone forever.

He shook himself awake. This was no time for grief. This was time for action!

The Major took note of a fluttering tentpole. "Orderly! Why have you established an aid station downwind of the attack site?!" He glanced around the aid station in shock. Dust, radioactive dust from the explosion was everywhere. "The wind is blowing the fallout this way! It is getting into wounds! Have you no sense, man?!"

It wasn't much fallout, but to these men… it was a death sentence.

His skin itched. Was it the fallout? Or was it just the suit?

He decided it did not matter. If he had been exposed to radiation strong enough to burn, he was probably dead already. Either way, he had to do his job.

It was then that he noticed the Indian Army men in gas masks milling about the aid station, their old capitalist-made Norinco battle rifles at the ready. There were wounded among them, and bore the regimental colors of units sent to fight the Pacificans in the mountains. A truck came in with more bedraggled Indian troops, their faces ashen, angry with defeat. Retreating units from the Indian offensive? Had the Pacificans used the nuclear attack to cover a counteroffensive? Were attack helicopters already on their way?

An Indian officer – the very same Indian Officer from the meeting – seemed to be organizing the men. A crowd of Indian technicians had gathered near the edge of the clearing, sending bitter glances his way. Alarm bells went off in his head.

The Major blew his whistle. "Men, form up!" A dozen Soviet troops, including his driver, managed to form a rough line.

"What is your business here?" He prodded.

"You stand by idly while we your loyal allies fight and die in battle, while the soil of our great Republic is poisoned by imperialist nuclear weaponry! If you will not release your weapons to defend your allies, what is your business in the Republic of India?" The Indian officer had tears in his eyes.

"The Soviet Union has already released weapons for an adequate retaliation on your behalf!"

"One airfield destroyed! Hardly an adequate response to _this_!" The Indian officer gesticulated to the burning forest. "More warheads must fall on the imperialists!"

"The final decision to use nuclear weaponry rests with the Soviet Union!"

That was apparently the wrong thing to say, because the Indians began to move forward menacingly. The Major froze. The notebook. The locations of the weapons must not fall into Indian hands with such ease! He stepped back towards the flames even as his men raised their Kalashnikovs at their nominal allies, hoping to burn it with his lighter. "Don't let them through!"

His men – even after all that had happened – still trusted him. They opened fire, and automatic weapons clattered in the night.

Clutching the notebook, the Major threw himself onto the dirt, and hoped that his wife would be able to handle things after his departure. She'd be fine. He believed in her.

Something slammed into the back of his head, and the Major's world went dark.

All across India, effective control of the Soviet nuclear umbrella changed hands.

=O=


	34. Lost

Thanks to Ridersofrowan, CajunBear73, TheDeathlyRider2287, OechsnerC, and everyone else for their reviews and input. This chapter is a rather bleak one.

=O=

Chapter 34: Lost

Fourteen years earlier

Wuhan, Hubei Province, Joint Government of the Pacific

Astrid led her family down the blacked-out street, a bag of groceries cradled in each little pair of arms. Even with the partial evacuation, the ration lines had been extra-long today, what with news of the big Japanese offensive underway. The air raids had gotten worse – so bad, in fact, that school had been cancelled. The Headmistress had sent everyone home with carbines, antitank rockets, and submachine guns.

The Hoffersons weren't leaving just yet. The Ford plant, with its huge piles of steel and coal, wasn't going to close until the Japanese, "parked a tank in the production hall", as her mother put it, and they had decided as a family that sticking together would be a preferable alternative to being scattered to the four winds.

Every day, the remaining newspapers carried lists, horrible lists of thousands of evacuated children, their paperwork lost in the chaos of war, desperately trying to find their families. And there had been false alarms before. The Japanese had tried to take Wuhan twice, and twice they had been beaten back. Astrid had no intention of waiting for days in a stuffy train station for delayed evacuation trains, their priority listings useless, their trains stuck amongst critical military traffic – and there appeared to be a lot of that these days.

"BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"

The air raid siren blared to life. Astrid swore. The boys sniggered, and Kara looked at her inquisitively.

"Eric, Kirk. Knock it off." She turned to Kara. "I just said something very mean that nobody should say, okay, Kara?"

The boys laughed, and Kara giggled as Astrid racked her memory of the neighborhood for an air raid shelter.

This had been a bad day for a ration run, and an even worse day to bring the twins and Kara along for some extra hands and fresh (kinda) air. But they'd been stuck indoors since school had been cancelled, and the boys had been getting restless.

There were four concrete foxhole shelters on the street. Astrid pulled the manhole-like cover off the first, and gagged at the stench of rotting garbage and old rainwater. _Okay, mark that down as a last resort. _

She found the illuminated sign of the air raid shelter just as flak began to pour skywards – but oddly, no antiaircraft missiles.

"Get in! Get in!"

Interceptors roared overhead as she ushered the boys and Kara inside.

She looked around the tiny bunker, lit by a single electric light. A smattering of industrial workers rubbed elbows with housewives and four steel-pot-helmeted militiamen, the insignia of the 152nd Wuhan Battalion emblazoned on their olive-green fatigues.

The watchman turned off the electric light, and they sat together in darkness.

Kara buried herself in Astrid's jacket.

"Could we turn on the light, please?" Astrid asked. "My sister's scared of the dark."

The watchman shook his head. "Battery's limited, miss."

"Kara, you're a good girl. A brave girl. Big sis loves you. We're safe here." This seemed to placate Kara. Her littlest sister really had gotten a lot braver over the past year, and had adjusted well to moving in with their neighbors – much moreso than the boys, who had taken to making trouble in the Zhou household.

"Another air raid? They attacked just this morning!" Someone hissed.

"Well, they _are_ trying to capture Wuhan. They need to soften it up first. I heard they've been attacking our air defenses a lot lately." Another opined.

Someone – probably one of the militiamen – laughed. "Haven't you heard?! The Japanese broke through our lines this afternoon! Japanese tanks are rolling down the Interstate as we speak!"

Everybody gasped. "What?!"

The militiaman nodded. "They could be here in a matter of days."

"I thought they were attacking Nanjing!"

"Must have been a feint!"

"Either way, they'll take the Yangtze! And the railways! We won't be able to ship goods up and down the river! We'll lose Shanghai!"

Kara began sobbing as panic filled the room. "Shhh. Shhh."

A dull ping reverberated off the roof of the bunker.

"What was that?!"

"Antiaircraft shell."

"Here?"

Astrid looked up in worry as more pings ricocheted off the bunker. If they were firing flak over the residential district, that meant there were bombers overhead.

They sat together in silence, broken only by the occasional plink of an antiaircraft shell.

"Where are all the bombs? I don't hear any bombs." Astrid frowned. Air raids had never been like this. The all-clear should have sounded by now.

The militiaman spoke. "She's right."

The pinging seemed to stop. "Saddle up, boys. We're going out to investigate."

The bunker door opened, and the militiamen, carbines at the ready and disposable antitank rocket launchers slung over their shoulders, went out into the night.

Astrid weighed her options, and snapped her fingers. "Boys, stay here and look after Kara and the groceries. I'm going to see if it's safe to go home."

Astrid stepped into the cool, smog-drenched night air, and turned her eyes briefly skyward. A full moon graced the celestial vault, bathing the blacked-out streets in dim moonlight. She sighed, and took in the constellations, counting them off as she scanned the heavens. _Big dipper. Little Dipper. Draco… _

No flak, no missiles.

Something big and green drifted across the sky. _What was that?_

The crack-crack-crack of small arms fire drove her to the ground.

Astrid looked up, and watched in horror as a man, suspended from a huge green parachute, drifted to the ground not thirty meters down the street.

An Imperial Japanese paratrooper, a banzai headband wrapped around his cropped bell-shaped helmet, emerged from beneath the nylon canopy, a short assault rifle at the ready.

"Japanese paratroopers! Japanese paratroopers!"

The paratrooper ditched his chute, dived to the side, and began shooting. The militiawoman closest to Astrid went down. Astrid rushed to her side, and, using all her strength, dragged the skinny woman into a side alley. She tried to shake her awake, and wetted her hands on her blood-soaked uniform. Astrid tried to find her neck… and found instead a jagged mess.

She thanked the darkness. If it had been bright enough to see the mess in detail, she would have thrown up on the spot.

She rifled through the militiawoman's pockets for ammunition, and picked up the carbine. She tugged at the disposable rocket launcher, but it wouldn't budge.

Shouts came from the street, and she abandoned the effort.

Across the street, a dead paratrooper lay sprawled on a rooftop, still tangled in his parachute. Evidently, he had landed on the sloping roof and gotten stuck.

But on the street were three paratroopers – still locked in a gun battle with a surviving militiaman.

She took aim. Through the night, she saw the lanky young paratrooper move to reload his weapon.

She hesitated. The handy, familiar carbine felt slick in her hands, and the usually rock-steady sight trembled.

The paratroopers charged forward, and gunned down the militaman.

They moved down the street… towards the air raid shelter.

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

Astrid watched as the paratroopers seemed to crumple up as her rounds made contact. Someone screamed, and Astrid barreled into the dark alley as fast as her legs would carry her. Bullets pinged off the brickwork, but the paratroopers didn't follow.

_I just shot someone I just shot someone I just shot someone..._

What were paratroopers doing here? There were no factories here! Were they after the Interstate? The big bridge across the Yangtze? The airport? Those were miles away!

It never quite occurred to Astrid that the vaunted Imperial Japanese Army, like all armies, could and did screw up... frequently.

Astrid wound her way along side streets and back alleys, heading back to the air raid shelter, back to the boys and Kara. _Please be okay please be okay please be okay._

One grenade in the shelter and her family would be mincemeat.

To reach the boys. To reach Kara.

_Please be okay please be okay please be okay._

She reached the shelter, and swung the heavy door open.

"Big sis!" Kara squealed.

"What's happening out there! I heard gunfire!" Eric asked.

"Japanese paratroopers! They're all over the neighborhood!" Astrid exclaimed.

Kirk picked up a bag of rice. "Do we ditch the groceries?"

Astrid gritted her teeth. "No. We keep them as long as possible."

_Who knows when we'll get rations again? _

"We should all stay put. The paratroopers won't be here long, one way or another." One of the housewives piqued.

A man rose to leave. "My house is five minutes away. The battle could last weeks! I'm taking my chances before the tanks show up!" His eyes flickered to Astrid's carbine.

Astrid hefted the carbine, her finger on the trigger. The man raised his arms, and backed out of the bunker.

Kara began to sob. "Where's mommy?" Astrid gulped as her brothers turned to her, the question clearly having resonated.

"She'll… have to take care of herself. She can't possibly come home with that going on outside." She inhaled sharply. "If it comes to it… we'll… leave a note or something. And if we get separated, we meet in Wuhan after the war, and if we end up evacuated overseas, we find Uncle Ralph in Detroit."

She motioned to Kara and the boys. "Come here." She extended her shaking arms, and wrapped them all in a crushing hug. "I love you guys so much. We have to be brave now, okay? Let's go home."

=O=

Astrid's heart raced as her family crept through blacked-out streets. Once familiar, the narrow lanes, steel-grate doors, clotheslines, and pagoda-roofed row houses now seemed hostile, alien. They ducked behind the garbage can where Kirk had found a dead rat, hid behind the metal gate the dumpling place always never locked properly, and crouched by the gutter along which Astrid and Eric had raced paper boats with the neighborhood kids.

Astrid stopped at another corner, gingerly poked her head forward... and froze.

On the opposite street corner – barely a stone's throw away - stood a trio of Japanese paratroopers. Their gazes – and rifles - seemed to wander from rooftop to rooftop, as if they were trying to gain their bearings. One paratrooper, using his rifle as a makeshift crutch, struggled to stand as he tried to examine his fellow's torchlit map.

_They're lost. _

Astrid gulped as she turned the safety off.

No hesitations this time. The last time she had hesitated, someone had gotten killed.

But there were three of them. Could she get them all before they returned fire?

She had barely gotten one of them last time. But she had done it at school, right? And last time was practice. She could do it. She could do it.

Her carbine shook as memories of the crumpled-up Japanese paratrooper and the bloodsoaked militiawoman flashed before her eyes.

She lowered her carbine. Could they sneak past? Or was shooting them a better option?

Kara began to sob. Astrid clamped a hand firmly over Kara's mouth, and shook her head.

She certainly couldn't shoot with one hand.

She motioned to Eric and Kirk to be quiet, and pointed at the street opposite. They picked up the groceries.

The paratroopers were all looking at the map - perfectly distracted for four kids to make their escape.

_It's now or never. _

Carrying Kara firmly in her hands, and avoiding the moonlight like the plague, she slithered across the street.

She made it.

Eric was right behind them.

He made it. Astrid gave him a reassuring squeeze as he slid in position behind herself and Kara, his back against the wall, trembling in fear.

Kirk began his sprint…

...and one of his cans chose that moment to come loose with an awful, awful clatter.

The Japanese troops turned around, bayonets at the ready, and began to chatter in Japanese. One man roughly shoved his bayonet before Kirk's face, and pointed at a map. In the moonlight, Astrid could make out that the map was heavily annotated – covered in scribbles, circles and arrows.

Kirk trembled as the paratroopers pointed to the map again, refusing to say a word and pointedly avoiding Astrid's tear-filled gaze.

To look back would draw attention to his family, so he looked straight ahead. He pointed vaguely at the map, and shrugged.

Astrid tried to thrust Kara into Eric's arms, but Kara was still on the verge of crying. She abandoned the effort.

_Just cooperate. Let him go. Let him go, please. Please. _

He pointed more forcefully at the map, which seemed to satisfy the Japanese. Kirk backed away towards the alley from which he had come.

_Good boy, Kirk. Take another route home. _

A paratrooper raised his rifle and shot Kirk in the head.

Kirk crumpled onto the ground, landing headfirst with a hard thwack.

Mutters were exchanged between the paratroopers, now scanning the block nervously for unwanted attention, as Astrid looked on in shock. Kirk's killer made a dismissive gesture at the _thing on the ground_.

She glanced at her carbine, and then Kara, still cradled in her arms, and Eric. What was more important to her? Vengeance for one family member, or the survival of the rest?

_Get a grip. Do the logical thing. _

The choice was almost too easy.

As the paratroopers disappeared down the street, Astrid slowly led Eric and Kara away, leaving Kirk's body to cool in the night.

They got home, and collapsed, bawling and wailing, in front of the cage shelter.

Between sobs, Astrid alternated between glaring at Kara and staring at her hands – with still a little bit of blood under the nails.

She wanted to scream – at Kara, at herself, at the Japanese.

It was Kara's fault for crying. It was her fault for chickening out. It was her fault for deciding they go home with groceries. It was her fault for not giving Kara to Kirk or Eric to handle in the first place. It was the Japanese's fault for invading. It was the paratrooper's fault for shooting _my little brother who couldn't even read Japanese!_

How was she going to explain this to mother?

_Victory meant saving as many of us as I could. I won. _

By the time the counteroffensive rolled around and it became safe to go back, Kirk's body was gone.

=O=

_Author's note: I had two endings mapped out for this chapter, and picked the one which seemed to better fit Astrid's arc. Rest assured that Chap 34 will be substantially lighter and happier (to a degree, of course). _


	35. Found

Thanks to Ridersofrowan, theDeathlyRider2287, and OechsnerC for their reviews and input.

=O=

Chapter 35: Found

"That must have been… pretty rough." Hiccup nodded slightly as Astrid finished her story.

Astrid nodded. "I had it better than half the country, I guess. But…" She closed her eyes, and Hiccup looked uncomfortably away.

The hardened shelter had gone quiet with the dusk, as men and women exhausted from nearly a whole day frantically cleaning up the aftermath of the Indian nuclear attack slackened their pace. Hiccup and Astrid had spent all day decontaminating cockpits and checking Delta Darts for damage, even as other squadron-mates hurriedly took to the air, on the lookout for follow-on attacks, and as Berk emptied, working Delta Darts sent elsewhere.

No birds were yet available for them, and the squadron CO had wanted Astrid properly rested after the accidental shooting.

Astrid's aim had been off – the carbine had been pretty rusty, and, after inspecting the weapon in daylight, Astrid was surprised she had managed to hit anything at all. It had still been enough to nearly kill the poor maintainer from Shanghai, who, by all reports, had nearly bled to death from a bullet wound to her thigh – just one of the dozen friendly fire incidents compounding the thousands of casualties from the Indian nuclear strike.

The board of inquiry would have to wait. The war continued, even as the press breathlessly reported the progress of frantic negotiations between Portland, Moscow, and New Delhi. Hiccup hoped that the negotiations would amount to something, but he trusted the scuttlebutt more than the radio, and the scuttlebutt wasn't good. It wasn't good at all.

"It was hard, Astrid. It would have been hard on anyone." Hiccup patted her gently on her shoulders even as she lay against the wall, her hair slightly wet from the last decontamination shower.

Astrid sighed. "I thought… I thought that I learned something from all the sacrifice. I thought that… at least… it made me a stronger person. A better person. That I, by being the best _me _that I could be, could make Kirk's death… worth something."

Hiccup inhaled sharply. "Well… at least you saved Kara and… uhh…"

"Eric." Astrid bit her lip. "But it didn't work, didn't it? I just went straight through to the other side and got myself wound-up and kill-happy."

Hiccup knew the stories. Sometimes, veteran fighter pilots, overeager for another red star on their jets, put themselves and their wingmen at undue risk trying to score more kills – often getting people killed in the process. Heck, he'd thought Snotlout would've gone kill-hungry long before Astrid, but Astrid, apparently, thought different.

"And I practically stole a rifle from a guardpost and shot a random girl with it, because I thought I was in a fight!" Astrid fumed at her idiocy.

"Well, it was a confusing situation. It's not like we've ever been nuked before. And she isn't dead. They'll _probably_ let you off easy." Hiccup stood up, and rifled through a drawer for a candy bar. He frowned. "Why didn't you stay put and wait for instructions like we're told to?"

Astrid racked her memory of the mess. "I… was trying to get to you. I… needed to know you were safe, and I wanted to keep you safe. And… I wanted to tell you that…" She trailed off.

Hiccup passed her a candy bar, even as his heart raced. "I'm… flattered." He paused. "So… I guess that's how you learned to shoot too, huh."

Astrid smiled. "You don't need to change the subject, Hiccup. Tunnel vision is what got me into this mess." She leaned closer to Hiccup, and rested her head on his shoulders.

Hiccup leaned back on hers, enjoying the sensation of wet hair on his skin and the smell of the decontamination foam.

They watched the sun set through the open shelter door, and basked in the soft sunlight of dusk.

No words needed to be said. Hiccup's mind wandered even as he tried his best to savor the moment, to live every second as if it were his last, to ignore the little part of him listening intently for the blare of the klaxon, for the call to arms, for orders to charge once more unto the breach, for the .

One day. One day to talk, to laugh, to love. One day of clipped conversations and brief hugs, seconds and minutes stolen from the immense Pacifican nuclear war machine, in high gear, working them to the bone as it sought to get Berk's surviving squadrons back on the line before the last bit of radioactive rubble was swept from the last operational runway. One day, when he wanted a lifetime.

They'd all taken pretty heavy radiation doses – they'd probably feel under the weather in half a month or so, as their bone marrow failed temporarily to keep up blood cell production - but nothing life-threatening. As long as they didn't pick up more rads, they'd probably be more-or-less fine, at most with a few percentage-points higher risk of cancer.

Given that even without radiation exposure, between a quarter and a third of the population was expected to develop cancer anyway – if they lived long enough - Hiccup didn't think too much of it. That, he opined, was a problem for the public health people.

If they had swallowed radioactive dust, of course, they could die from a local cancer in somewhat less time. But that was what the masks had been for. (Inhaled radioactive dust, apparently, often gets trapped in mucous membranes and coughed or sneezed out… or swallowed)

His eyes flicked to the Geiger counter – one more sweep just to be sure? – and back to the girl on his shoulder.

In his mind's eye, a badly burned radiation casualty, moaning on a contaminated floor, lost control of his bowels once more.

So much of this could have been avoided with better precision-guided weapons. If only…

"Hiccup… what are you thinking about?" Astrid whispered.

Hiccup scratched his chin. "Astrid… I have a confession to make. You know… full disclosure before you… commit to your decision."

Astrid rolled her eyes. "Out with it. Drama queen." She muttered under her breath.

"I… didn't leave the Development and Test Center because I wanted a change of scenery." He inhaled sharply. "I was fired. Well, technically, I resigned, but it was under circumstances of professional and personal failure."

Astrid didn't say anything, and Hiccup's breathing grew rapid.

"So… I'm not a crackerjack engineer looking for a little more excitement in his life. I'm a failed weaponeer who decided to try his hand at another job."

He turned shamefully towards Astrid. Astrid was… smiling?

"Yeah, I kinda gathered that much from your service record, Hiccup. I can read between the lines, you know."

Hiccup sighed. "It's just that… I sometimes wonder. If I'd managed to stay on at the test center… whether I might have made a difference. Whether we might've had the weapons ready in time for this war."

Astrid laughed. "Hiccup, wondering what might have been… isn't going to change anything." She thought of Kara, and of Kirk's lifeless body lying in a tarmacadamized street. "Learn from what could have been. But focus on what can be. What you can do. What you want to do. What you're doing now."

"It's just… I wanted to make a difference, you know?" Hiccup said. "Now… I'm just another cog in the body of a massive machine, instead of a cog in the head."

Astrid pulled him close. "Hey. You've saved lives. You've flown missions. You've made your difference. Systems win wars."

She kissed him on the lips. "And you're my little cog. You make a difference for me."

Hiccup turned beet red. "Thanks, Astrid."

"Eh, one extra engineer in a team of eggheads wouldn't have pulled the schedule forward three months anyway. Better you're stuck here with me." Astrid nudged him playfully on the shoulder.

"Well, now I guess we're even…" Hiccup stopped midsentence, and his eyes went wide. He rose to his feet.

"Hiccup?" Astrid followed his gaze to the shelter doorway, where a bearded Air Force general was talking to a gaggle of officers.

=O=

Stoick Haddock emerged from the boxy cargo bay of the C-142 Vertitruck, a scowl planted firmly on his face – not that anyone could see it behind the mask of his NBC suit.

The smoldering, radioactive remains of dozens of bombers littered the apron. Radioactive wreckage – far too 'hot' to remove economically – clogged up taxiways between blackened revetments. One taxiway had been completely obliterated by a huge crater where it had been struck by a five-kiloton bomb.

Another huge crater, nearly a hundred meters across, lay astride the South Runway, its radioactive lip just touching the cracked, flaked superhardened concrete.

He frowned. A smarter weaponeer would have dropped an airburst over the apron to maximize blast damage to aircraft, and saved the groundbursts for the runways. Had the Indians wished to maximize radiological contamination? Had their fuses been jammed? Or had the flight planner just wanted to maximize flexibility in the strike force? Fusing options could not always be changed in-flight.

Flying low amongst the Himalayas to avoid radar, five Indian twin-engine bombers had penetrated five hundred kilometers into heavily-defended Joint Government airspace, completely undetected and unopposed until minutes before weapons release. Two had been shot down by nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles before they could drop their bombs, and one jet had missed the airfield by a mile - not unheard of when flying low, at night, across unforgiving terrain, while being shot at – but the outcome had still been an utter disaster for Aerospace Defense Command.

Stoick had counted on ADC's Delta Dart force to defend his airbases from the Indian Air Force, leaving his forces to frolic freely in enemy airspace without worrying about their bases. So far, this assumption had been sound. But under nuclear conditions, where a single penetrating bomber could wreak immense destruction on an airbase – well, it was clear that ADC just could not provide airtight protection, even against obsolescent aircraft.

A gaggle of officers awaited him on the tarmac. Stoick glared at each one of them, but saved his worst for the local Air Defense Command general. Heads would roll for this.

He shuddered as he passed rows and rows of wounded in the treatment center, resisting the urge to vomit into his suit. Piles of medical equipment – cleaning brushes, bandages, tourniquets - lay discarded in special metal bins, all contaminated with radioactive dust, all slightly hot.

His own headquarters was completely reliant on ADC interceptor coverage for its air defense. After this debacle, he was seriously considering diverting short-range SAM batteries from forward troops to provide an additional defense against low-altitude aircraft.

"General… I want a full report on the circumstances of the Indian attack, and a thorough review of this debacle." Stoick growled.

"Intercepting low-flying enemy aircraft in the Himalayas… is challenging in the best of times." The ADC commander stuttered. "Without Blackbirds, and with inadequate AWACS coverage…"

"This was a known contingency!" Stoick roared. "You _knew_ the Indians had light bombers, you _knew _Berk was in range, and you _knew _intercepting them would be essential once we started dropping nukes! From initial reports, it seems clear to me that you did not properly prepare for this. You did not make a clear case for requesting additional forces, nor did you redeploy aircraft for a deeper or closer defense."

The Army Air Defense man swallowed as Stoick turned his gaze to him.

As a critical strategic target, Berk had been slavishly defended by overlapping batteries of Nike-Zeus nuclear SAMs. A generation ahead of the cheaper Nike-Hercules missiles that covered Stoick's forward troops, the Nike-Zeus was far more effective against ballistic missiles and maneuverable supersonic aircraft than the older missiles, which only had only a limited capability against such threats.

Berk had certainly been a far harder target than his own headquarters. Out of range of Scud tactical ballistic missiles and irrelevant in a strategic nuclear war where longer-ranged strategic weapons would come into play, he had not allocated his headquarters even a single Nike-Hercules battery.

The Army had nonetheless failed to shoot down even a single bomber.

Stoick had every intention of giving the man a piece of his mind. Stoick had received barely enough Nike-Hercules missiles to cover his forward troops, and the man had failed at his job even when he had _two_ Nike-Zeus batteries at his disposal…

Stoick sighed. It wasn't his fault. The Indian Canberra bombers, Pacifican-made lend-lease leftovers from WWII, had mostly flown beneath long-range SAM coverage – and most probably medium-range SAM coverage too, had it been present.

Stoick sighed, and turned to the TAC representative. She duly reported their losses, and finished by stating what aircraft she had left.

Stoick boarded a pickup truck with the other officers, examining once more the revetments, the hardened shelters, defense outposts, and munitions stockpiles of the sprawling airbase.

Thanks to ADC's failure, over a hundred large aircraft – tankers, bombers, and two irreplaceable RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft – had been put out of action. The troops on the ground would feel those losses, with less air support, more, better-supplied enemy troops arriving at the battlefield, and higher casualties.

He completed his inspection of the base, and stopped in front of a hardened shelter, its massive sloping concrete door open. A nozzle showered him with foam as Heather walked up to him. "Hey, boss!"

"Heather? How are things holding up here?" Stoick doffed his hood and mask.

"Pretty well, actually. Everyone's doing a pretty good job on the post-strike cleanup – certainly better than we expected. But then again, this was a pretty weak retaliation. Face-saving, even."

Her voice dropped to a whisper. "The latest news from Portland is that negotiations seem to be going ahead."

Stoick nodded. "That's excellent news, Heather."

Heather shook her head. "No. The latest assessments indicate that the Indians have gained control over virtually all nuclear weapons in India – we're reassessing how much control Moscow has over its puppet as we speak. And the picture in New Delhi hasn't improved – if anything, the national mood appears to be that the Soviet retaliation was inadequate. We're expecting the war to escalate."

Stoick nodded. "Damnit. And things seemed to be going so well, too."

"General Bludvist, on his own initiative, is readying his forces for what he believes will be orders for follow-on nuclear airstrikes." Heather added. "I suggest you posture your tactical air forces for extended nuclear operations."

Stoick nodded. "Better safe than sorry."

His suit doffed, Stoick gave the decontamination station a once-over, nodded at the foam team, and turned back to the gathered officers.

"I'm sure you're all eager to return to your units. There's always too much to do and not enough time. And I'm sure you're all wondering whether you will be ready for what's coming – doubly so given the attack last night." He paused, eyeing the smoking wreckage in the corner. "We're facing a very different kind of war – a kind of war never before waged in history. We cannot know whether we are ready or not."

"So we do our best, and based on precedent, plan to be ready _enough_. You may not have enough time left to correct all the problems that have emerged since the last attack." He glanced at the Air Defense commanders, Army and Air Force.

"But we will do our best. And between preparations past and present, I am certain we are ready _enough._"

"Are there any questions?"

For a moment, Stoick turned away from the base commanders and towards the hangar door.

=O=

"Dad?"

Heather hadn't recognized him.

The Hiccup H. Haddock III in the file had been a slim, clean-shaven fishbone of a man who looked like he had been stuffed into an oversized Air-Force-blue suit – even when the suit had actually fit perfectly.

The pilot walking towards the General had grown a tiny bit of stubble, and seemed to fill out his fresh baggy olive-green NBC suit perfectly. He looked confused – but the confusion seemed not to mar his stride, as if he was walking towards a problem he knew how to solve.

_Shit. _

Heather strode towards Hiccup Haddock – yes, that was definitely him – and stepped purposefully before him. "Sir, I'm going to have to see some identification."

Hiccup scratched his head. "Well, I'm Captain Hiccup Haddock, pilot, JGAF. Uh… my card's in my wallet, which I don't have on me right now, but…"

A tall woman, her blonde hair woven tightly into a tight braid, stepped forward. "He's with me. Why are you asking for identification? Big Pete's crew is over there, and they sure as heck don't have their cards on them."

Heather sighed. "Look, I work for your father, okay." Hiccup's eyes went wide, and Astrid's went wider. "As you should know, General Haddock is very busy right now. He doesn't need any distractions."

Hiccup's jaw dropped. "Dad was in Heilongjiang just last year! What the heck is he doing here?"

Heather cocked her head. "Your father's been in charge of South Asian Command for _months_. He's running this whole show. Are you two serious?"

The woman took a glance at Heather's insignia-less uniform, and poked a finger in her chest. "We're Air Defense Command. Other than exercises, we've been part of SASCOM all of three weeks, _and_ we've been pulling overtime throughout. But you knew that, didn't you?"

Heather blanched. "Heck no! I wouldn't have let Stoick anywhere near this hangar if I… oh, crap." Heather facepalmed as she realized the import of her words.

Hiccup's face fell. "Astrid, I think… if Dad's been running this war just fine without me… it might be better if we just stay out of the way until this blows over."

_Astrid_ stared Heather down, and folded her arms. "Hiccup, he's your father. Talk to him."

Hiccup seemed to waver.

"You may not get another chance. Trust me." Astrid said.

Hiccup walked towards his father.

Heather sighed. "You know, if this blows up in all our faces, this is all on you."

Astrid's face remained impassive, but Heather watched the woman's eyes flicker as she ran through the scenarios, considered the stakes, pondered the outcomes… and evaluated the _costs_ of a distraught commander and a distracted backseater, both to herself and the nation as a whole.

Astrid nodded. "I believe in him. And I believe in family."

Heather grimaced. "Hope is not a plan."

"I know." Astrid chipped. "That's why I have a plan."

=O=

Hiccup pushed through the small knoll of technicians just as his father finished speaking.

His father turned around, and for the first time in nearly a decade, Hiccup met his gaze.

The last time he had seen his father had been in college. Stoick had finally caught up to him, and a remark about how he had found a college too far away from home had degenerated into a shouting match over how Stoick had never shown mom the respect she craved, how Hiccup had never truly appreciated the sacrifices the entire family had made for the sake of the nation while packed away in his cozy boarding school, how Stoick had left him to fend for himself and never appreciated anyone else, and how Hiccup had been spoilt rotten…

Stoick's expression was unreadable, and he gently looked away.

Hiccup's first instinct was to run to him. To give him a hug, and then yell at him for… for… driving mom away? Destroying their family? What, this time?

But Dad was in the middle of something. He took a deep breath, and stood back to collect his thoughts as Dad answered anxious questions from Hiccup's superiors. Questions about targets. Questions about nuclear weapons release against ground targets. Questions about the soundness of the Administration's strategy, its _plan_ for when things invariably went off-script.

A supersonic bomber roared off the runway, bristling with bomb racks clustered around a comically oversized centerline fuel tank.

His father had a lot on his mind. Hiccup had to get this right.

The questions ceased, and Stoick, leaving the officers behind, walked past the big, sloping concrete door – but in a direction away from Hiccup.

Hiccup walked up to his father, anxious to see his face. "Dad?"

"Son." His father shifted uncomfortably, apparently as lost as he was. "I uhh… thought you were at Nellis."

Hiccup nodded. "They accelerated the program. I got through."

Stoick nodded stiffly, and swallowed. "So… you'll be flying into India, then."

Hiccup frowned. Did he really think his own son couldn't do what everyone else could? "It's all I've been doing for the last two weeks, Dad."

"Son, I was a rookie once, too. Please, just stick to the book, remember your training, and don't do anything stupid."

"Dad, I can do my job." Hiccup tensed.

"Don't argue with me, son. Rookies rushed through training just like you had the highest sortie loss rates back during…"

His father's aide grimaced at the exchange.

Astrid stepped forward, and interspersed herself between the squabbling Haddocks. "Hiccup, you two… are family. Your dad loves you very much, and wants to see you come home in one piece."

She turned to the General. "Sir. Captain Astrid Hofferson, 74th FS." Astrid extended her hand. "Flew MiGCAP in Impending Doom II, Siberia."

Stoick snorted. "I cannot say that ADC's squadrons gave a particularly good account of themselves in that war, Captain. Nor has ADC's performance here impressed me thus far."

Keeping her face impassive, Astrid continued. "Understood, sir." She paused. "I'm your son's frontseater. While we can both agree that he can be… difficult… at times, he has proven extremely proficient in his duties, and he… has my complete confidence. You have every right to be proud of him."

Astrid was staring at him. Hiccup gave a weak smile.

"While there are no guarantees in our line of work, especially with the current… situation… your son… is in good hands." Astrid turned back to Stoick.

Stoick nodded. Hiccup nodded back.

Astrid gave the Haddocks a pat on their shoulders. "You're family. Enjoy the time you have together. You might not get another chance." She guided Hiccup forward, and the Haddocks wrapped each other in a bear hug.

"Son… it's been too long…"

"I know, Dad. I know. I'll be fine. If we both do our jobs, we'll pull through."

Stoick squeezed him tighter, and whispered into his ear. "They're escalating, son. They're escalating."

Hiccup nodded gently.

Heather sighed with relief as Astrid approached her. "See? Plan."

After what seemed like forever, Hiccup broke the hug. "I… have some more birds to check."

Stoick straightened out his tie. "And… I have to get back to headquarters."

"I'll ride herd on him, sir, don't you worry." Astrid pipped.

Stoick nodded as Heather ushered him away. "Aye."

Hiccup waved. "Bye, dad!"

Stoick waved back, and disappeared behind a crowd of maintainers.

"See? What did I say? Talking is the way to go!" Gobber chuckled as he emerged from the shadows. "Now back to work. That's a break for the ages, if I do say so myself…"

=O=

The radio in the ready room blared as the late-night newsman at the microphone continued to service millions of sleepless listeners, glued to their sets for news about the war.

The TV beeped a banal tone, a checkerboard pattern gracing its curved screen. Unlike the radio, very few TV stations had programming on at this late – well, early - hour.

"We have just received word that a Soviet diplomatic car has been seen leaving the building where frantic negotiations have been ongoing since last night. This may herald a change in the crisis. I repeat, we have just received word that…" The newsman paused. "Unofficial reports from the scene suggest that talks have broken down. I repeat, after sixteen hours, negotiations to end the nuclear war have broken down."

The radio blared to an empty room. Half-finished games of cards, checkers, and chess, half-finished meals and drinks, and half-finished final letters to home littered the tables.

The roar of a turbojet echoed across the room.

The men and women who had inhabited the room were long gone.

=O=

_Author's note: As promised, a lighter, bittersweet chapter. Off to nuclear war we go... _


	36. Tactical Nuclear War

Thanks to CajunBear73, Bdog3601, and OechsnerC for their reviews and input

=O=

Chapter 36: Tactical Nuclear War

"Sir. Tactical and strategic forces are on alert, and forward troops should be receiving warning orders momentarily. Tactical nuclear forces are ready to respond automatically to enemy nuclear use. If called upon, strategic forces are in position to respond with selective and major attack options within the hour." The attaché, his easel at the ready, nodded sharply.

The Advisor thanked the attaché, and offered a cup of hot coffee to the President, who was leaning forward over his desk, exhausted from sixteen hours of backbreaking negotiations with the Indians.

The Advisor grimaced. All that effort – and the inevitable had merely been forestalled by one day.

He spoke. "You think the Indians'll wait a bit before attacking?"

She shook her head. "Nope. Not at all. Stalemate is… not their thing."

The Secretary stormed into the situation room, shaking his head. "Well, the Soviets were most unhelpful. So what's the plan, Mr. President? Do we preempt?"

"No." The President whispered. "We will not preempt."

The Advisor nodded in agreement. "Preemption only grants us limited advantages. On the other hand, letting the Indians shoot first gives us political carte blanche to use as much nuclear firepower as we want."

The Secretary frowned as he examined the board. "Up to and including a major attack option?"

The Advisor nodded. "Richard, I know you wanted to keep this war limited to the borderlands, but the Indian bombers constitute a major threat to our allies in the region. Unless the Indians back down immediately after they salvo, they have to go."

The Secretary frowned. "Do we have any other options? In case the Indians do something… completely unexpected?"

"Unfortunately, our options are rather limited at this point." The Advisor put down her coffee cup. "SAC's bomber force is currently locked in a high-readiness retaliatory posture to execute a major attack option. To reconfigure would take hours – hours during which the Indian nuclear force could escape and/or launch an attack. Striking fast and hard is our best option."

The Secretary nodded. "No objections here."

"We gave peace a chance." The President's jaw was set hard. "Now, we'll let them shoot first, and then shoot 'em until they can't shoot back. We win this thing."

=O=

The Captain ran as fast as he could. His breath fogged the plastic-coated eye-holes of his gas mask, and sweat ran down the insides of his nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) protection suit in rivulets. Given the circumstances, though, he was exceedingly grateful for the horribly encumbering suit.

Through his fogged mask, he could just make out a massive pillar of smoke and dust, still riding the air currents into a mushroom cap somewhere in the dark grey sky above.

The strike hadn't been a complete surprise – which was why he was still alive, and which was why his company was still mostly intact.

It had happened so fast. One minute, he'd been in the thick of a firefight with Indian reconnaissance troops, and the next, he had followed orders to _duck duck duck,_ a massive fist had slammed into his foxhole, a mushroom cloud had erupted over their rear area, the _entire valley was on fire_, and battalion had fallen off the radio net.

He looked in awe at the valley below. Literally everything that could possibly catch fire was on fire, turning the forested valley floor into a sea of flame. Even patches of moss on the barren upper slopes smoked gently, having absorbed too much heat from the flash.

He made his way to the weapons platoon. The Sergeant, almost unrecognizable in full NBC gear – gasmask, rubber suit, bottoms, gloves – was already handing out the nuclear rockets. "Good job, Sergeant!"

As usual, the combination for the storage case had been set to 000 – a combination not even the greenest private could ever forget. "What the hell's going on, sir?!"

The Captain shrugged. "Hell if I know! I can't raise battalion!"

"There's a radio's working back with third platoon, sir! We can call arty!"

"Excellent! Get a runner over to third platoon, call in a strike, and have them move the radio over to first! Call down fire on reference points two and three now! We've got enemy armor massing at the pass! I want artillery to put nukes on those tank columns now! And I want enemy arty out of the picture when it rears its ugly head!"

"Private! You heard the man!"

The soldier looked lost. "I dunno how, sir."

"Just repeat what I said. They'll figure it out! Remember, Two and Three!"

The Captain glanced at the watermelon-sized nuclear warhead before him, ensconced in a carrying bag. He picked it up, and slung the thirty-odd-kilogram weight over his back. "Follow me! Nuclear weapons platoon up to the ridge!"

In the valley below, a surviving segmented jeep barreled around wildfires, a nuclear rocket launcher mounted on a pintle. Good. Everyone had the same idea.

More mushroom clouds – really big ones, from the looks of it – rose over the hills as they made their way back to the ridge, tightly clutching their precious nuclear antitank rockets.

They got to the ridge, panting in their bulky, hot NBC suits. Enemy artillery landed all around them, forcing them to the deck as shrapnel tore through the air like supersonic confetti. Three men didn't get back up.

The explosions stopped, and the trooper hastily set up the launcher, pushing it above the ridgeline.

The Captain hastily dialed in the yield: twenty tons of TNT-equivalent, maximum. A firecracker, really – barely enough to level a city block or blow up a bridge, no more powerful than a B-52 strike.

He looked down the length of the valley. This _really_ wasn't very good tank country.

Elsewhere on the ridge, an antitank missile roared down the valley as a tank platoon, in single file, rumbled into view. It missed the lead Soviet-made tank, leaving trails of command wire all over the turret as it exploded ineffectually behind it.

The company had spread itself thin on purpose so a single nuclear warhead wouldn't get them all, which had greatly cut into their ability to fight as a team. A single tank should have been hit with two or three antitank missiles at once, damnit!

Heck, the whole division had spread itself thin. The rest of the brigade had started pulling back the previous night, leaving a battalion in place to hold the passes with help from lots and lots of firepower. But the B-52 strikes had dried up – scuttlebutt had it that their base had been badly hit – and orders from brigade had gotten increasing confused.

Unlike the forces to the rear, who could evade detection and targeting by nuclear artillery simply by moving around a bit, his boys had been fixed in place, and gotten nuked for his trouble.

He turned his attention back to the task at hand. The yield dialed, he hurriedly screwed the warhead onto the rocket motor, and mounted the oversized bulb-headed contraption – a stubby cotton swab of a rocket - on the tripod-mounted launch tube with a click. He surveyed the scene below. The tank trundled forward, spraying the ridge with machine-gun fire as it advanced.

This was what these puppies had been built for. An honest-to-god nuclear battlefield, where communications were so screwed up, and where tanks moved so fast, that you wouldn't live to call in a nuclear artillery strike, and it would be off-target by the time it arrived.

Better to have the nukes with the infantry: See tank, shoot tank; simple, reliable, dependable.

In war, sheer _simplicity _counted for a lot.

"Get the lead tank!"

The operator took aim. "Ready!"

"Fire!" He let loose the rocket, and everyone ducked for cover as a massive, twenty-tonne explosion rocked the valley. The blast rolled over them, and a tiny, misshapen mushroom cloud, a big plume barely a kilometer tall, slowly rose into the sky.

The Captain poked his head over the ridge, eager to see the results.

The lead tank was a smoking wreck, but the second tank, while shaken, seemed scarcely affected by the blast, emerging from the dust cloud with little more than smashed optics, shattered antennas, and damaged externals… before grinding to halt.

Probably blast and radiation effect, the Captain thought. A forty-tonne tank might _physically_ survive a nuclear blast, but its crew might not survive being tossed around inside a steel box with lots of hard objects, nor would it survive the prompt neutron radiation from any small atomic weapon.

The last two tanks belched thick clouds of white smoke, and reversed course as fast as they could, hoping to disappear into the smokescreen.

"Ready!" The operator shouted.

"Fire! DUCK!"

Another nuclear rocket barreled down the valley, exploding with an earth-shattering kaboom somewhere in the cloud of smoke. Damnit.

The enemy column disappeared behind banks of man-made fog.

There was a lull before enemy artillery shells came screaming down once more, exploding in puffs of smoke and thunder. How the heck were their radios still working?!

A nuclear flash washed over the valley, turning everything golden-white.

"DUCK AND COVER!"

Six massive explosions, one after the other, erupted in the near distance as the artillery, in a panic, did their job, smothering enemy artillery positions and presumed columns of armor in 0.1-kiloton baby nukes – hopefully enough firepower to break up the attack.

Hurricanes of dust roared over their position as the Captain pressed himself as flat against the dirt as he could, trying his best to block out the hammer blows echoing across the valley.

Someone screamed. The Captain got up, and continued screwing nuclear warheads onto rocket motors.

Six small mushroom clouds, each barely two kilometers tall, rose from down-valley, adding to the smoke and dust.

A tank emerged from the blast zone. And another. With this much smoke, and fire on pre-registered positions, there was a fair chance the artillery had missed the column entirely. Firepower, even nuclear firepower, was not quite helpful when there was nobody to aim it.

Nor were the nuclear artillery shells particularly large nukes - against tanks, they had a kill radius of a hundred meters from impact at best. That was not a bad thing – had the nukes been any bigger, he'd have been vaporized along with the tanks.

The tanks had spread out as much as they could, and had begun firing enthusiastically even as they continued to lay down smokescreens, fearful of nuclear attack.

_No artillery support for them either this time…_

"Ready!"

"Fire! DUCK!"

Another nuclear warhead streaked down the valley, obliterating the enemy tank in the middle, and stopping the others in their tracks.

Chinook gunships popped up across the ridge, loosing TOW missiles on surviving tanks, and raking the battlefield in autocannon fire before withdrawing. No antiaircraft fire rose to meet them. Hah! The 'soft' antiaircraft guns, with delicate radars, had not survived on the nuclear battlefield!

Ragged holes emerged in the smokescreen, allowing the captain to glimpse a tank column in the fog.

"Sir!" A radioman, huffing and puffing in his heatstroke-inducing radiation suit, screeched to a halt in front of him. "Radio!"

The Captain barked quickly into the radio, almost unable to believe the words spilling from his mouth.

He was calling for nuclear artillery fire, danger close – under a kilometer away.

He was authorizing more nuclear counterbattery fires.

He was observing shells as they fell amongst the tanks, ready to call down a nuclear coup de grace.

But he was saying the words, and the man on the other end was confirming them.

"Shot, over."

The Captain turned white. "DUCK AND COVER!"

The valley was bathed in light. Blast after blast rocked the valley, and a massive dust cloud smothered his position in hopefully non-radioactive powder. The tops of an additional four mushroom clouds began to poke over the ridge as the lead tank columns were smothered in two nuclear artillery rounds each. More men screamed as atomic shrapnel tore across the battlefield.

"Splash, out."

Another tank emerged from the gloom. The projections had been right - a single nuclear artillery round _was_ only effective against half a tank company.

The Captain cursed the delays in the neutron bomb program. With less blast and more armor-piercing, crew-killing neutron radiation, neutron bombs would have worked much better on tanks while being far less dangerous to his men.

"Ready!" The nuclear rocket launcher had relocated, and was aiming downslope.

"Fire! DUCK!"

The lead tank disappeared in another massive explosion.

The Sergeant spoke. "Sir! We're running low on nuclear rockets and shells! We need to raise battalion or higher, fast!"

The Captain swore. "We have to hold until brigade sends support down here!"

The Sergeant was incredulous. "We can hold for six more hours maybe, twelve if arty lays down extra kaboom! Then we're out of ammo and stuck out here!"

"That's nuclear war for you, Sergeant! I need to get to first platoon!" The Captain left. Nuclear war had never been about blasting every infantryman out of his hidey-hole (although that _was _possible, he supposed). The point had always been to demolish the resupply and command system, causing armies to grind to a halt.

Now to find first platoon. He hoped the nuclear demolition charge was still intact, but given that they hadn't blown it yet, it seemed unlikely.

His radiation meter was clickling angrily, but the Captain ignored it. If the Indians rolled over his position within the hour, fallout would be the least of his worries.

=O=

They headed south.

As a warm white glow seeped under his flash curtain, Hiccup resisted the urge to peak out his left window, where the sun was rising above a curved horizon into a blue-black sky.

Toothless swept beams of microwaves across the Himalayas, eagerly taking in the scenery on radar – and watching for enemy aircraft. In the distance, B-58Bs crisscrossed the skies above Assam, shiny white one-megaton bombs and Short-Range Attack Missiles (SRAMs) hanging beside their gigantic centerline fuel pods, ready to pounce on any FROG rocket batteries that revealed themselves.

The mountains crested fifteen kilometers below them, and the valleys of the disputed area, the plains of Assam, and East Pakistan came into view, the world stretching out before them to a pale blue horizon five hundred kilometers distant.

Hiccup blanched in horror.

Palls of dust obscured the barren valleys, obscuring their crisp, sharp ridges with staticky blurs.

"Astrid, they launched! I count two… three initiations over the disputed area. Tactical weapons, maybe a hundred kilotons. Adjust heading eleven o'clock."

Astrid inhaled sharply. "Looks like our odds of going downtown just went way up." She smiled a little smile, eager for payback and not just a little saddened by what payback might bring. She took Toothless higher, hoping to gain altitude before the retaliatory strikes began.

"Topaz flight, this is Mordor. Daisy, I repeat, Daisy."

Far below, more rockets launched skywards from the backs of light trucks as Indian troops desperately tried to fire all their weapons before they were destroyed. Desperate men methodically loaded spare missiles onto launch rails even as some turned their eyes skyward, searching in vain for the weapons that would end them.

Toothless swept his radar across the valleys, searching intently for enemy launches.

"Astrid, we've got more nuclear rocket artillery! Seven. Nine. Twelve… multiple launches! They're headed right for our supply lines on the ground!" Even more dots appeared on his screen, heading higher and faster than before. "Scuds! Headed for support bases!"

On cue, a flurry of dots rose above the mountains from the Pacifican side of the border, arcing towards pre-registered targets across Assam. "And… here come our Pershings. Coming our way now."

Little nuclear rockets, travelling in opposite directions, arced past Toothless, crisscrossing the heavens as they fell past each other towards targets on the far side of the massive mountain range.

Hiccup pictured the great battles beloved of epics and sagas, where, amongst and above great clashes of armies of pike and sword, men on horse- and dragon-back charged hither and yon across open fields, even as arrows and catapult-launched-projectiles filled the skies.

Well, technology put the battles envisaged by even the greatest of epics to shame. For the fields now stretched across vast mountain ranges, nay, across whole continents, and the aeronautical battlefields above them stretched into infinity, far above the bottom eight kilometers of sky where men could breathe the air and live. Pike and sword had given way to guns that could punch through feet of solid steel, cannon that blasted death across the horizon, and missile launchers that could hit a target more surely than the best longbowman. And with the dawn of the Atomic Age, each blast of a gun, each rocket, each missile… could obliterate in instants unbeatable armies, impregnable cities, great nations that would have otherwise have taken years to vanquish.

No cities were to be incinerated yet. Despite the fearsome firepower under consideration, the ongoing nuclear war appeared to be a tactical one – constrained to the battlefield, albeit one that seemed to grow larger by the minute.

A bright light snaked its way beneath the flash curtain, and the radar picture changed unrecognizably. Eight flashes tore across Assam as the B-58Bs of Topaz flight dropped their one-megaton bombs on uncovered and suspected FROG and Scud batteries, hopefully destroying as many of them as possible before they could get off the ground.

This was not like the surgical nuclear strikes against missile launchers and SAM sites of the day before. This was wholesale destruction of whole areas with weapons a thousand times more powerful – death sentences for largish patches of countryside. The only consolation would be that they were using _airbursts_, with minimal wide-area fallout.

One megaton _groundbursts_ – necessary against bridges, railway yards, and other hardened targets - would have spread fallout over an area the size of a small country.

From horizon to horizon, mushroom caps rose in their dozens high into the stratosphere, terminating in billowing pillows of turbulent air and slightly radioactive dust that loomed large on Hiccup's radar screen.

"Hiccup, snap out of it. Mushroom caps!"

"Alter course zero-one-zero."

"You got it, Hiccup."

Toothless rocked gently as the blast wave of a nearby weapon reached them through a distance of forty kilometers, having sucked missiles out of revetments out to three kilometers and blown down farmhouses and villages out to six.

From beneath the rising mushroom clouds, amidst gestating firestorms, one or two dots continued to rise into the sky as the Indians flung what was left of their tactical arsenal into the sky, attracting the attention of yet more B-58Bs.

More mushroom clouds soared skywards as they went feet wet over the Bay of Bengal.

"Okay, Astrid. Continue southwest, and we should be at our hold points in no time."

=O=

Ruffnut blasted through the foothills of the Himalayas, methodically banking and rolling Meatlug as she flew well below the height of the surrounding ridges. Meatlug roared past treeless gravelly slopes, rockfalls, and raging mountain streams as Ruffnut kept her eye on the altimeter.

Some distance away, an F-111 lugging a reconnaissance pod roared past, bobbing leisurely up and down under the guidance of automatic terrain-following radar – _lucky bastards_ – as it headed to southern Assam to determine whether targets had been sufficiently nuked.

Hey, this wasn't a strategic nuclear war, where you were allowed to double-up or even triple-up the ICBMs on targets "just to be sure".

Ruffnut laughed. Nuclear war! She was fighting an honest-to-god nuclear war! And she looked _so_ cool! To prevent crews being completely flash-blinded by nuclear explosions, TAC aircrews flying in nuclear environments always wore eyepatches – so you could hope to survive one nuclear flash and not crash your plane because you were, like, totally blind.

Yeah, sure, she was probably not going to see Astrid again, and cleaning the radioactive dust out of every nook and cranny in Meatlug had been a chore, but the adrenaline was more than adequate consolation for the time being.

Ruffnut Thorsten, Atomic Sky Pirate. It had a nice ring to it, Ruffnut thought.

Barren valleys soon gave way to lush forest as they crossed into Indian airspace.

A mighty flash pulsed across the sky as an army tactical nuclear missile incinerated the valley next door, and Fishlegs trembled in awe as a gargantuan mushroom cloud rose fifteen kilometers into the sky, towering over the mountain peaks.

"Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap. Ruff, that's at least a hundred kilotons right there."

"Less talking, more nuking!"

The terrain leveled out, and Ruffnut hit the deck, roaring across the treetops at just under the speed of sound.

Fishlegs checked his map. "Ruff, SAM site, eleven o'clock. We should try to stay…"

"Target of opportunity!" Meatlug banked left, and Ruffnut scanned the ground below for…

"Eight kilometers, dead ahead!" She barked.

Fishlegs checked his cathode-ray-tube and locked on. "Rifle! Missile away!"

A Maverick TV-guided anti-tank missile, tipped with a two-kiloton nuclear warhead, roared off the launch rail, and Meatlug banked sharply right, crushing Fishlegs as Ruff turned as far away from the site as possible.

A gentle flash flittered across her instruments, and a sharp crack was heard over the roar of the turbojets.

They continued to barrel across the plain as nuclear flashes crackled in the sky like flashes of lightning. In the distance, Fishlegs watched in horror as two massive mushroom clouds rose over the horizon, each perhaps thirty kilometers wide and peaking at twenty kilometers. "Uhh… that looks like a megatonnner."

"We've got a megaton right here, Fishlegs. Eyes on target!" A patch of low hills and valleys rose in the distance.

Fishlegs gulped. "Okay… adjust heading zero-zero-nine… steady… loft in three… two… one…" The computer readied itself.

"UP!" Ruffnut brought Meatlug into a steep climb, and Fishlegs authorized it to drop the bomb.

At a carefully computed moment, the computer released the slim one-megaton thermonuclear bomb. The console beeped, and Meatlug lurched upward, suddenly one metric tonne lighter.

"Gogogogogo!" Fishlegs fought the urge to close his eyes even as Ruffnut banked sharply left to point Meatlug's tail at the imminent thermonuclear blast. Ruffnut pushed her throttle to the max, engaged afterburners, and whooped maniacally as she put as much distance between herself and the bomb as possible.

The one tonne bomb sailed through the air. Full of momentum from the Phantom's climb, it continued upwards even as the Phantom banked clear away, arcing towards its target like a thrown baseball.

It was clear from statistics like these that nuclear power was _at least_ a million times more powerful than chemical power, Fishlegs thought. Why else would a nuclear bomb with the power of a million tonnes (or a 'megaton') of chemical explosive weigh but one tonne?

Somewhere over a hilly area of farms, villages, and suspected hide positions for an Indian armored brigade, the white-painted bomb deployed a slim parachute as its radar altimeter flickered to life.

"six… five…" Fishlegs closed his eyes, and Ruffnut kept her eyes on the ground

A massive fireball, over a kilometer across, erupted over the hills, and a searing flash burned through exposed skin over a circle twenty kilometers across. A blast wave thundered across the region, demolishing even concrete houses up to three kilometers away. Every window in a fifteen-kilometer radius shattered, flying through the air in a deadly hail of glass, slicing through those who had not known to duck-and-cover or worse, risen to seek the origin of the flash.

"Cowabunga!" Meatlug rocked as the blast wave passed the jet. "Onward to our secondary target!"

She racked her brain for the correct procedures. Man, she hadn't flown close air support in years. Did Fishlegs even know how to do close air support?

"Hey Fishlegs, you remember how to do close air support?"

"Uh… no. But look! This is a free-fire zone. Anything in this box is hostile."

Ruffnut groaned. "Do I have to do everything around here?!" She painstakingly worked the radio even while trying to fly her aircraft.

They rocketed above a dirt road, and her Geiger counter beeped alarmingly as they passed scorched valleys.

"Hey! A bunch of trucks!"

Ruffnut shrugged. "Might as well pop them all off so we can call Winchester and go home."

"Rifle! Missile away!" A nuclear Maverick sped towards the truck convoy, and they banked away from their third little mushroom cloud of the day. Two left.

"Holy hell." Fishlegs called out.

Ruffnut looked down. Before and atop a large landslide, a dozen armored vehicles – half of them burning – charged forward, frantically exchanging fire with someone on the other side. She racked her head as she tried to remember what she needed to check for.

A flashbulb went off somewhere around them, and Ruffnut swore as black stars shot through her vision.

_It's daytime. You're not blind. It's probably temporary. _

She lifted her other eyepatch, and yanked hard on her stick as the lush green hills filled her canopy. Meatlug's engines roared to life, and Ruffnut was crushed in her seat as Meatlug climbed for safer skies.

"We're a little cooked, but we'll be fine. Low dose." Fishlegs stated.

"Goddamnit! If you've got nuclear arty coming in, tell us!" She yelled at nobody in particular.

She sighed as blue-black blotches appeared over her instruments, and put her patch over her bad eye. "Okay, there's no FAC on the line, so we'll just shoot what we see from a safe distance."

They dove towards the valley, and Ruffnut caught a glimpse of tanks mounting attacks even as little mushroom clouds intermittently covered them in dust and smoke. Ruffnut couldn't blame 'em. If you didn't move, you got hit by nuclear arty. If you moved, the man-portable nuclear rocket launchers might at least miss.

But they hadn't counted on fighter jets with two-kiloton nuclear anti-tank missiles.

"Rifle." Fishlegs launched a Maverick at the tanks still charging forward.

It fell off its launch rail without igniting. Ruffnut groaned. A 100,000-dollar nuclear missile - wasted just because someone in the arming crew forgot to pull off a fuse plug.

"Oops. Rifle." Fishlegs launched a second Maverick at the tanks. "Winchester."

They banked away as another flash rocked the valley. A great column of smoke and dust rose from the valley floor, terminating in a cap high above them.

"Don't you want to see how we did?" Fishlegs asked.

"Nope! Home for seconds!" Rad as the destruction was, Ruffnut had no interest in sticking around to be shot down in the middle of a nuclear battlefield.

An F-111 fighter-bomber, wings swept back, pylons clean, and two thermonuclear bombs nestled snugly in its bomb bay, blew past them at Mach 1.1 towards insufficiently-nuked targets in southern Assam.

Ruffnut whooped happily as scenes from the apocalypse unfolded around her.

=O=

_Author's note: I know it doesn't quite make sense to send a Wild Weasel driver out on a nuclear strike mission (that's a fighter pilot's job), but I couldn't resist giving everyone MOAR NUCLEAR WARFARE from near ground level. Plus, Atomic Sky Pirates! _


	37. Strategic Nuclear War

Thanks to Stingray10111, OechsnerC, CajunBear73, and Atomicsub927 for their reviews and input.

=O=

Chapter 37: Strategic Nuclear War

JGS Zheng Chenggong (DEG-36)

Bay of Bengal

The little destroyer escort drifted noiselessly on the calm blue waters of the Bay of Bengal, basking in the golden rays of the rising sun.

Built during World War II as a destroyer, the little grey ship had been extensively modernized under the FRAM program, as befitting a ship of the Atomic Age, and reclassified as an anti-submarine destroyer escort, as befitting an obsolete piece of junk. Its rapid-fire guns and hedgehog depth charge launchers had been ripped out, replaced instead with a boxy anti-submarine rocket (ASROC) launcher, anti-air missile system, canisterized Harpoon antiship missiles, and a cute little helicopter pad (and tiny hangar) for pilotless antisubmarine helicopters.

The tranquility of the ocean notwithstanding, the little FRAM can – as the crew called the fragile destroyer escort - was in a whole lot of trouble. The satellite communications suite had just authorized nuclear release, and everyone on board knew that meant that the Indians had nuclear release too.

"Contact! Bearing two-two-zero, range ten kilometers! It's close, sir!"

"Prosecute contact! One ASROC, nuclear!"

"Commander Cao? After this, we're down to one ASROC."

From his ship's Combat Information Center (CIC), deep in the bowels of the FRAM can, the Commander gave a nod. Sweat dripped from his brow, and his shirt clung uncomfortably to his chest in the humid air of the Indian Ocean, which the air-conditioning could never quite make go away.

The boxy launcher amidships spun skyward, and a nuclear-tipped anti-submarine rocket blasted skyward in a cloud of smoke, plunging into the ocean a mere fifteen kilometers away. Its ten-kiloton nuclear depth charge detonated, sending a jet of water high into the air, destroying any submarine within a kilometer or two, and deafening whales, dolphins, and sonars far beyond that.

The FRAM can rocked gently as the blast wave shook the ocean.

"Did we get him?" Someone asked.

The Commander wasn't taking any chances. A single nuclear torpedo could sink his flimsy ship – but then again, so might a conventional one.

"Sir, new orders from the satellite link!"

"Are we getting out of here?" The Commander hoped that it was the case. He desperately wanted to get out of range of every damned bomber in the entire Indian Navy. Carrier air had been skittish ever since the war went nuclear, and he was pretty sure he didn't have air cover worth a damn.

The night before, SASCOM had ordered the carriers pulled back – away from Indian shores, to defend the critical shipping lanes leading to Karachi, the Persian Gulf, Rangoon, and Chittagong. _Zheng Chenggong_ and part of the anti-air screen had been left behind, radars intermittently turned on and off, in mimicry of the Saratoga battle group, both to dupe the Indians into thinking that Saratoga still menaced their shores and to act as bait for Indian attacks.

Not bait, the Commander thought; flypaper. Bait implied a trap, a worthwhile sacrifice to destroy a greater foe. They were just here to keep the heat off Saratoga and her escorts, and weren't even expected to take any aircraft with them. Ergo, flypaper.

His radars had been off all day. Being flypaper was a lot more… survivable when carrier air was still reliable and when the enemy was not using nuclear weapons.

"Yes, sir. We're to withdraw to the east immediately. Navy wants us under the carrier air umbrella, stat!"

The sighed with relief – and a shrill alarm pierced the room. "What the heck?!"

"Sea search radar! 40 kilometers, due west! Indian Air Force B-57!"

The destroyer escort roared to life, steam turbines straining mightily as it began to plow its way through the Bay of Bengal, leaving a white trail in its wake. Coffee cups rattled off the tables of the CIC as the ship began to gain speed.

"Decoys!"

The FRAM can dropped a little buoy in the water with a splash – a decoy, covered in radar reflectors to seduce enemy missiles and confuse enemy radar operators.

"They've got us! Radars on!" The Commander gulped. His bare-bones Tartar suite stood a good chance against the B-57s, he convinced himself.

Over twenty kilometers away, two B-57s of India's Naval Air Arm dove sharply for the wavetops as angry beams of microwave energy swept the skies above them, eager to guide puny nuclear-tipped SAMs onto the silver twin-engined bombers.

"Damnit! We don't have them!"

The bombers split up, and circled around for a two-pronged attack.

The bombers climbed to toss altitude.

One missile left its armature launcher, covering the foredeck in smoke. With agonizing slowness, the launcher rose itself erect, rotated home, and loaded another missile.

A small nuclear flash shone across the Indian Ocean, downing one bomber, and utterly wrecking its single forty-kiloton nuclear bomb.

Puffs of smoke emerged from the FRAM can, sending chaff rockets skyward. In their final moments, the crew of the little destroyer escort was treated to a spectacular lightshow as golden clouds of chaff, drifting slowly across the sky, glittered in the dawn light.

It was a futile gesture. The Canberras did not have radar-guided missiles, and a rough track of the destroyer was more than adequate for the mission. Target acquired, the Canberra tossed its bomb, and broke away.

It missed by a kilometer – a direct hit as far as the forty-kiloton nuclear bomb was concerned.

A new sun shone upon the Indian Ocean. Even a kilometer away, the light was bright enough to blacken and blister the hull of the FRAM can as the paint on its surface caught fire. The missile on the launch rail immediately exploded under the heat, followed by the gasoline tank for the helicopter.

A hail of neutron radiation tore through the ship, ghosting through the steel hull and poisoning all within.

The blast wave arrived three seconds later. While being tail-on to the blast provided some limited protection, it was completely inadequate against the "small" forty-kiloton bomb, which crushed the little destroyer like the tin can it was, bursting seams open and bending load-bearing hull members.

Irradiated, burning, and crumpled, the destroyer escort sank within the hour, lost with all hands.

=O=

Hiccup took a peek outside his blackout curtains. The morning was shaping up to be a glorious autumn day.

Fine weather for air-launched missiles, freefall bombs, and short-range attack rockets.

Fine weather for nuclear war.

A tiny flash snapped by outside, causing him to duck back under the curtains.

Hiccup stared down at his gloved hands, his instruments, and the grey fabric of his bulky pressure suit. His eyes were fine. Damnit, that had been stupid.

He resisted the urge to turn on his radar. That would give away their position, and at this point, it was safer to stay silent and invisible… so long as nobody lit them up with a radar.

His threat board lit up. "Astrid, we've got radar! Huh. One of ours. Navy fire control. Why the heck are they lighting up?"

A brighter flash, and the radar went silent.

Another radar popped up on his display. And another.

Navy SAM radars, glued to the blue waters far below, crowed in anger as the shrieks of Canberra radars washed over them, sending waves of banal noise above the clouds. High above them, in the serene reaches of the stratosphere, scores of Air Force jets, painted white, silver, green, and black, circled lazily, sucking fuel greedily from silver tankers as they awaited orders to strike. Gentle flashes and the electronic screeches of distant nuclear explosions, large and small, echoed across the sky, and a few small mushroom clouds soared skyward, but none succeeded in intruding upon the bombers' stratospheric domain.

"Astrid, I'm picking up a lot of Navy radars… oh look, Indian B-57 radars. And… here come the Tomcat radars. They're shooting down there."

"This is Mordor. Bluebell. I repeat, Bluebell."

Astrid nodded matter-of-factly as the go-code echoed above the calm waters of the Indian Ocean. "Wow. That was quick."

He checked his weapons – three 200 kiloton Short-Range Attack Missiles (SRAM), and a single Falcon nuclear air-to-air missile. Toothless was ready for anything.

"We're good back here." He sighed gently with relief as he rechecked his briefing packets. Bluebell was the go-code for the counter-nuclear attack option – an attack on all nuclear-capable weapons platforms, which _theoretically _included trucks, roads that might support trucks, small missile boats and naval vessels, ports that could hold anything bigger than a small missile boat, and airports.

At least they wouldn't have to hit economic and industrial targets.

"…execute formation turn-around by the numbers." Mordor came in over the radio.

Orders for attacks on ad-hoc targets rolled in as Astrid took Toothless out of his stately figure-eight orbit, banking left and right as Toothless rocketed ahead of the B-58Bs. Across two thousand kilometers of ocean, a dozen Blackbirds did the same, overtaking the slower B-58Bs and staying abreast of two pairs of B-70s. Behind the supersonic aircraft, a brace of slow B-52s, a dozen SRAMs hanging from their pylons and eight more in their weapons bays, dove majestically for the wavetops, bound for poorly-defended targets near the coast.

Hiccup checked his target list. As before, the Blackbirds had mainly been assigned air defense targets, leaving most of the actual bombing to be done by the B-58s and B-52s.

Astrid killed the throttle, and Toothless slid smoothly in position fifty-odd kilometers behind a formation of three Blackbirds, a hundred kilometers apart.

"Viper flight, this is Viper lead. Viper 3, 4. You know your targets. Hit them all. If they don't go down, Viper 2 and me mop up."

Hiccup's mouth went dry. This was his flight. He was in charge.

The bombers came in over the radio. "Viper lead, this is Mamba lead. We're counting on you. Good luck."

The B-58B flight disappeared in the rear-view mirror as they approached the shores of India.

"Don't worry, Hiccup. We'll be fine. We did fine last time, and this time, we get to nuke every SAM site in our way. I mean, it's not like the Indians had a lot of them nationwide."

Hiccup winced. "Eh, about forty, fifty Gammons."

The calm waters of the Indian Ocean, inky-black on radar, stood in stark contrast to the hazy blur of land, far to his west, as they traced the shoreline of India at just under a kilometer a second.

"SA-5 site, dead ahead. Viper 3, this one's yours!"

"Rifle! Missile away!"

Viper 3's missile bay doors opened, and a SRAM Short-Range Attack Missile fell into the slipstream, turned a sharp corner, and screamed across the sky, surfing the stratosphere at 70,000 feet and Mach 3.5.

Above the SAM site, it tipped its nose down, and plunged downward at three times the speed of sound, missing the pre-located SA-5 site by three-quarters of a kilometer. Under repair after a half-kilometer miss by a 2-kiloton Falcon ARM the day before, the SA-5 site was powerless to respond, and disappeared under the blast wave of a 200-kiloton nuclear fireball, along with two small fishing villages and twenty-odd square kilometers of farmland.

"Moving on! Viper 4, you're up.!"

Two more SRAMs left the little strike package, and streaked two hundred kilometers landward towards another SA-5 site on the outskirts of the port city of Visakhapatnam.

Toothless chirped, prompting Hiccup to examine his display. An SA-5 radar, three SA-2 radars, and even an odd ship-based radar roared to life as the SRAMs began their supersonic dive.

The radars were not after them. The Blackbirds were well out of SA-5 range.

Hiccup watched his radar display in fascination as nuclear-tipped SA-5 missiles and SA-2s blasted skywards, aimed straight at the huge, plunging nuclear attack missiles.

The Indians had learned the critical lesson of nuclear air defense. Turning off your radars can no longer save you.

The missiles collided in blossoms of atomic fire, sending Indian naval officers and civilians scrambling for cover far below.

"Viper 2, take over and engage. Two missiles." Hiccup locked on. "Viper 1. Locked on. Rifle. Missile away."

Toothless rocked gently as the one-tonne SRAM fell into the supersonic slipstream, ignited its motor and blasted towards the SAM sites far below.

Three SRAMs bore down on the SA-5, and began their supersonic dives. More Gammons rose to meet the challengers – a mark of a healthy SAM battery. An important one too, covering the approaches to Naval Air Force Station Dega, co-located with Visakhapatnam International Airport.

One pair of missiles collided in a defensive nuclear fireball.

A second tiny fireball blossomed to life five kilometers above the ground, shattering windowpanes and sending lethal glass shards flying across the city.

Goodly chunks of semi-urban landscape disappeared under a kilometer-wide nuclear fireball as the SA-5 site finally failed, sending a vast dust plume skyward that blotted out vast chunks of Hiccup's radar display.

Two massive mushroom clouds loomed over the terrified inhabitants of the port city, belaying the fact that the city itself had been carefully and deliberately spared. Thousands still died in the sparsely inhabited outskirts, killed by flying glass or collapsing houses. Fallout from the airbursts, while minimal, might sicken hundreds more.

Hiccup chuckled darkly. While "minimizing collateral damage" seemed a perverse fig-leaf of a directive in a war where two-hundred-kiloton warheads were being thrown about like candy, the egghead in Hiccup knew that direct attacks on population centers could have killed far more people with far less kilotonnage, and were indeed undesirable for both moral and strategic reasons.

For in the theory of limited nuclear war, civilians were far more valuable as hostages than as corpses.

Enemy civilians still alive to be incinerated at the touch of a button incentivized the enemy to surrender, and deterred the enemy from incinerating your own civilians, encouraging both parties to limit nuclear attacks to military targets and hopefully end nuclear wars in peace treaties instead of total destruction. Dead enemy civilians simply cried out to be avenged – probably by turning your civilians into corpses.

Hiccup sighed sadly. Theory was being put into practice today, and from his ejection seat, "minimizing collateral damage" was looking about as bad as it sounded.

Behind them, B-58Bs, afterburners blazing at Mach 2.5, unleashed a pattern of SRAMs at SA-2 sites, and followed up with a pair of five-kiloton guided nuclear bombs on Visakhapatnam International's two runways. The headquarters for Eastern Naval Command was annihilated by a similar low-yield weapon, as was the main civilian port, mistaken for the adjacent military dockyard by B-58 pilots confused by their hasty addition to the target list and palls of smoke cluttering their radar screens.

Oops.

Astrid cursed as Hiccup continued to rattle off targets struck. The military dockyard and nearby naval academy would have escaped severe damage, and would have to be reattacked.

If only they had used bigger nukes…

Another B-58 launched a SRAM at an isolated airstrip down the coast, obliterating it entirely.

The irony that the defense suppression had caused far more casualties than the destruction of the actual targets themselves was not considered funny by anyone involved.

"Astrid! More targets, coming up fast!" Hiccup hastily swapped out the map in his folder, and began marking it with a grease pencil.

"Holding steady." Astrid noted.

"Viper 4. Rifle! Missile away! Damnit! Site's live!"

"Viper lead, Rifle! Missile away." Hiccup hollered.

"Viper 2, Rifle. Missile away."

Astrid took them into a zig, and the whole flight followed as SRAM after SRAM screamed earthward, literally blasting a hole in India's remaining air defenses, and sending flashes snaking under their curtains.

"This is Viper 3, we've got a bandit on radar. Mach 0.6, 3,000 feet, trying to hit the deck."

"Get a visual!" Hiccup hollered.

"Crap! TV telescope's whited-out… uhh… looks like a Canberra. Fox three!"

Astrid raised an eyebrow. "Woah. They had Canberras in the air."

"Got him! Scratch one bandit!"

Hiccup shook his head in disbelief.

_Flash. _An Indian radar station, already hit several times earlier, was silenced _permanently_ under a mushroom cloud.

_Flash. _An airstrip disappeared in a nuclear fireball, along with a half-dozen B-57 Canberras hidden in the woods nearby.

_Flash. _An SA-5 site disappeared off threat lists, along with a quaint little town a half-mile away.

_Flash. _A damaged SA-5 site, abandoned by its operators, was _permanently _destroyed as a nuclear fireball burst overhead.

_Flash. Flash. Flash. _Hyderabad International, on the outskirts of Hyderabad, went down under a medium-sized groundburst, followed shortly after by two other military airbases around the city.

Hiccup scratched his head. "Astrid, you think this is overkill?"

_Flash. _

_Flash. _

_Flash. _

Astrid shrugged. "No moreso than nuclear SAMs are. Eyes on target, Hiccup."

"This is Mamba 4, we're being engaged, aft quadrants! Jamming!"

"Radar on!" Toothless banked sharply, and roared into a countrysized turn even as he swept microwaves across the sky, desperately searching for the interloper.

"Afterburners on! Evasive maneuvers!" Mamba flight broke formation, glowing rocket plumes roaring from their engines as they powered through the slipstream.

Hiccup swore as the minutes ticked by. Against a backdrop of vast, stratospheric mushroom clouds sixteen kilometers tall, friendly blips scattered to the winds or dove to the deck. "Astrid, I can't find them! Viper 2, do you have target?"

Snotlout's backseater chirped up. "Negative, negative! Darnit, this is so much harder without Sauron."

"This is Mamba 3, they have missile lock! I can't shake 'em!"

Astrid climbed for altitude as they broke towards Mamba 3, and they dove on the target. "Got him!" Hiccup whooped. "Bandit's at Mach 2, 50,000 feet and descending. Hang in there, Mamba 3."

"Running him over." Astrid gritted her teeth. If they could just…

"He's got me in his basket! I need…"

Mamba 3 disintegrated into a burning ball of aluminium as a missile found its mark.

"Tone! Fox three! Missile away!" A nuclear Falcon streaked earthward, and Toothless shot back up towards the stratosphere even as he kept the target in sight.

A soft flash snaked under Hiccup's windows as the two-kiloton missile obliterated the enemy interceptor.

"We got him!" Hiccup cheered. "Scratch one MiG!"

Astrid joined him. "All right Hiccup!"

Toothless went into an S-turn, rejoining the rest of Viper flight as they hit their last targets and headed back out to sea, dodging mushroom caps as they went.

Mamba flight followed them out, one aircraft short.

=O=

The Indian officer drove across the countryside as the apocalypse unfolded around him. Everywhere he looked, mushroom clouds rose skyward, roiling clouds of hot air sucking in dust and dirt from vast firestorms – miles and miles of burning countryside - at ground level. Assam had become a mushroom farm from hell.

His young nation – crippled at birth, divided against itself by cynical imperialists, harangued with legalese when it tried to assert its rightful place in the sun, and threatened with superior and overwhelming force at every turn by smiling diplomats professing reasonableness – was burning. India, the land of his fathers and forefathers, the land he loved so much – was being set alight.

His leaders had been less than wise, true, but the nation had to do _something. _

_This was not their fault!_ The Pacificans had used nuclear weapons first! Launching the battlefield nuclear rockets had been the only way to salvage Indian and Soviet prestige in a deteriorating situation. His leaders had seen it. He had seen it. Those damned Soviets had refused to see it, insisting to the end that escalation was suicidal and that no tactical military advantage could be gained from hitting back at the Pacifican invaders with nuclear weapons because, _yet again_, the imperialists had tactical and strategic nuclear superiority.

He gritted his teeth.

Under his suit, his skin itched, he felt nauseous, and he had a nasty red welt where, he presumed, some especially radioactive piece of dirt had clung to his suit – perhaps the other day, perhaps now. It mattered not. He would do his duty.

He was on his own now. No matter how hard he tried, he could not raise New Delhi on the radio – or any of his nominal superiors. His orders had been to keep the strategic weapons hidden, to be used as a force-in-being, to retaliate against "unacceptable attacks".

He glanced again upon the dozens of mushroom clouds around him. How was this acceptable?

Palls of smoke drifted across the sky, and his Geiger counter ticked appreciably.

He checked the target list he had been given.

Lhasa, Provincial Capital and road and rail hub for all of Tibet.

Naqu City, road and rail junction and home to 10,000.

Changguan, road and rail junction and home to 50,000.

Mangkang, road and rail junction.

Jiegu, Headquarters of South Asian Command, site of a major airbase, and road and rail junction.

Others, if he had any missiles leftover. Two missiles per target would be optimal – but he would probably have to skimp. This list would not destroy the imperialists – or even kill very many of them. But it would maximally disrupt Pacifican road and rail access to the Himalayas, defending his nation from the Pacifican onslaught that was sure to come.

And it would send a message. _A very clear message._

The cliff loomed ahead, and the Indian Officer plowed forward, eager to inspect the missiles.

Miraculously, thankfully, his missiles were safe in their hides. He barked orders, and teams of technicians entered the caves, meticulously checking the missiles for damage. The task done, they rolled the missiles into the sunlight, ready to raise them, fuel them, and launch them – a process that would take perhaps two or three hours with his moderately-trained crews.

He urged them on, eager to launch.

Every minute the missiles spent on the ground was another minute they could be destroyed.


	38. Deescalation

Thanks to Atomicsub927, TheDeathlyRider2287, CajunBear73, OechsnerC, and Ridersofrowan for their commentary and input.

=O=

Chapter 38: Deescalation

Toothless skidded to a halt at the end of the runway, and Astrid lifted her canopy as she taxied Toothless to the nearest hardened shelter. She opened her helmet visor, enjoying the chill of the stiff wind blowing down from the Himalayas.

Well, crap.

She slammed down her visor, hurriedly checking for dust on Toothless's skin. No dust.

_Because that's all wide-area fallout is. Radioactive dust, produced when dust and ash gets sucked into a nuclear fireball, irradiated by neutrons until it glows in colors you can't see, and scattered to the four winds. If you can keep dust out of your house and out of your mouth for two weeks, you'll survive a light dusting. But if the dusting's heavy, and you don't have a basement to keep a meter of dirt or metal or concrete between you and the glowing dust cloud of doom… well, you'll die indoors. Possibly within hours or less. _

_It all depends on how heavy the fallout is, and how thick your roof is. _

"Relax, Astrid. Toothless isn't hot – well, the airframe is hot because of supersonic flight, but it isn't radioactive hot right now." Hiccup gazed at the sky. "Even if there was substantial fallout, it's gonna take a while to get here. A few hours at least." He shrugged. "But we are probably going to eat most of the fallout from this. The prevailing winds over Central Asia blow west, and the Monsoon blows north this time of year. If the fallout plume is big enough, we'll be right under it."

"That is, unless the radioactive dust rains out over the Himalayas with the moisture from the Bay of Bengal. We sure as heck don't see any of the moisture here." He gestured to the parched grasslands around him even as he looked skyward, lost in thought.

"I think we'll have bigger problems than fallout, Hiccup." She gazed across a row of gleaming B-58Bs, stopping to squint at the Nike-Zeus anti-missile battery in the distance. "This place has bullseyes painted on it from one end to the other."

"We don't have to worry about fallout. We'll _be _fallout." Astrid chuckled darkly as she imagined her vaporized remains wafting into the sky.

"Airfields get groundbursts. You gotta rip out that runway somehow…" Hiccup chuckled with her, and shook his head as a B-52, a dozen white nuclear-tipped attack rockets dangling from its pylons, roared off the runway into an overcast sky, bound for a dispersal field somewhere in Inner Mongolia.

His eye flitted to the burned-out apron, and the huge trenches filled with piles of radioactive wreckage that lined its edge. A small army of bulldozers was hard at work burying the radioactive debris under layers of earth. Hiccup admired their optimism that Berk would exist long enough for the hazardous wreckage to matter.

_We were almost fallout. _

The trapezoidal hardened shelter loomed before them - a massive hillock of concrete, rubble, and more concrete. Four massive sloping doors, one for each aircraft bay, lay flush against a steeply sloped wall. A concrete berm ran along the far side of the shelter, providing space for a munitions dump while providing additional protection to the blast doors on the far side.

The shelter's shape never failed to remind Hiccup of an ancient Egyptian mastaba – the flat-topped trapezoidal tombs of prominent Egyptians not quite royal enough for pyramids. He shuddered, imagining what some far-future archeologist, studying, perhaps, the nuclear glasslands of Central Asia, would make of the shelter's contents.

Between the munitions, service equipment, and accommodations for crew and pilots buried deep within its concrete slopes, the hardened shelter could keep Toothless in the fight for _days_, even if cut off from the rest of the base by fallout or enemy attack.

The massive sloping concrete door – more of a moveable wall, really - slid open on well-oiled rails, and Toothless trundled inside as his engines cut out.

Much to their surprise, Gobber was waiting for them.

Hiccup hopped off the ladder, and made a beeline for his prosthetic-legged mentor. "Hey Gobber! What are you doing here? I thought you'd be working on deep maintenance."

Gobber laughed. "Are you daft, boy? We're in a nuclear war! If we can't get it flying in under 48 hours – that is, before the war's over – a jet is as good as dead. All hands on deck!" He rolled an inspection cart up to the avionics system, and began pulling out components as dozens of maintainers swarmed the aircraft.

"Do you have any idea what's going on? What are they saying on the news? Anything from higher headquarters?"

Gobber sighed as he checked and chucked a gizmo. "All that the local radio is saying is that there's a limited nuclear war in progress, and that residents should get to fallout shelters."

Astrid came jogging back. "Bathroom's yours." Hiccup raised a finger. "So we aren't retaliating against the Soviet Union? The war's still limited?"

Gobber shrugged. "If they let me figure that out, it wouldn't be much of a secret, eh? As far as I can tell, SAC's running the same over-the-top airborne alerts they've been running for the past week. And if that's all I can make of SAC, it's probably all the Soviets can make of SAC too."

"Hiccup's just starved for news." Astrid turned to her backseater. "Hiccup, if you don't use the bathroom soon, someone else will."

Hiccup left.

Gobber nodded. "We're all starved for news." He sighed. "How are things out there?"

Astrid shook her head. "Bad. We've pretty much carpet-nuked the mountain passes, and we counted seven one-megatonners over Assam before we headed to Central India. And we dropped… I'm guessing maybe fifty megatons worth of defense suppression all over India."

Gobber winced. This was a lot bigger than he had thought. "We're hitting central India?"

"I dunno about everyone else, but Hiccup and I hit airbases, air defenses, and maybe a few ports." She sighed. "Gobber, it was insane. We practically hit every SA-5 site we knew about with a SRAM, and we spent half our time dodging the mushroom clouds on our way back. I'd have ripped off the curtain to take a look… but the flashes just kept on coming."

"Aye, that'd have been a sight to see. Let's hope no Soviet weapons survived that. This is bad, though. I'm no analyst, but I can't see how the Soviets or Indians can walk away from this."

Astrid made a face. "Me neither."

She ran her eyes across Toothless, and took a peek at the bathroom doorway. "Gobber… when the Soviets loosed nuclear SAMs at us the day before, we lost one in three birds they shot at – and that was with a pretty badly dinged-up SAM network."

Gobber frowned. "Eh? I thought we lost one bird."

"They shot at three aircraft. We lost one. I heard the squadron next door lost two out of four."

Hiccup emerged from the bathroom.

Astrid gulped as she eyed Hiccup, who had stopped to chat with a maintenece sergeant. "In Toothless, I can evade normal SAMs. I can't always escape nuclear SAMs. If the war widens, and we have to go up against Soviet air defenses… I'm not sure we'll make it."

Gobber closed his eyes. "Well, if it comes down to that, you'll just have to trust in the first wave of defense-suppressing IRBMs, your SRAMs, and the integrity of the overall nuclear strike plan." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "The SAM sites you don't hit… someone else will hit them. The radars you don't see… somebody else is watching them. Focus on your part of the plan, and do things one step at a time. You've done this before. You can do it again."

Gobber eyed Hiccup, who gave them a cheery wave as he strode towards them. "Both of you."

Astrid swallowed, and nodded gently.

Gobber just closed his eyes.

"Hey guys! What'd I miss?" Hiccup gave Astrid a boyish grin.

Gobber spoke before Hiccup could finish studying the expression of incredulity on Astrid's face. "You two are being lined up for a plain interceptor patrol. We'll fuel Toothless up, bomb 'em up, and do some work while you two have lunch." He turned to Hiccup, and gestured to the dumplings on the folding table. "You two have a nice meal, because it'll probably be canned rations from here on out."

A fallout forecast blared across the base as the big concrete door slid shut.

=O=

Stoick glanced at his map board in horror. Across the width and breadth of the theater, dozens of red and blue markers representing Indian and Pacifican nuclear strikes pockmarked the map.

The red markers were a minority, swamped by a sea of blue.

A staff officer placed another dozen blue markers on the board. Not a single red marker had been added to the board for an hour.

Someone else came in with the latest casualty counts. The Hospital Board liaison was in for a busy day.

The Indians had managed to scrape together enough surviving tactical nuclear weapons to land a major blow against the Airborne and Mountain troops holding the disputed sectors. In both the eastern and western sectors, forward positions, supply dumps and helicopter strips had gone up in nuclear fireballs. Helicopter operations had slowed to a crawl – had it not been for Nike-Hercules SAMs and the dispersal order, they would have been wiped out entirely. Forward units were hanging on with profligate use of nuclear firepower, but their efforts were increasingly turning to survival, fallout protection, and evacuation. Out at sea, the Fifth Fleet had been mauled by the remnants of the Indian Navy, although the carriers had thankfully escaped major damage.

The only good news – if it could be called good news – was that the Indians were in even worse straits. The Indian supply system, bound much more than the airmobile Pacificans to the narrow passes of the Himalayas, had been utterly devastated by the overwhelming Pacifican nuclear counterstroke – a counterstroke that had been far larger, far better directed, and far more sustained. Pacifican tactical air operations had for the most part been untouched by the strike, and Pacifican civilian casualties virtually nil. And while panicked reports of Indian tank columns surviving nuclear artillery strikes abounded on the overworked radio nets, the overall picture was one of complete annihilation of the attacking Indians.

The massive nuclear area bombardment of Indian rear areas had been the icing on the cake for the Pacifican defenders, disrupting transport across the entire region.

Perhaps the best news was that the war was still limited. Despite the megatonnage involved, on both sides, nuclear use had been _limited_ to military targets. Civilian collateral damage was heavy, but tolerable where nuclear war was concerned.

Heather walked up to him. "Latest reports suggest New Delhi has lost contact with its nuclear arsenal. It's not time for high-fives yet, but the guys upstairs are optimistic that we got all of them. It looks like they've stopped shooting off nukes for now."

Stoick nodded. More good news. They might actually survive this.

A staffer emerged from the videophone room. "Sir. Administration's ready for you."

Stoick sighed, and braced himself for the inevitable end for his run of good luck.

=O=

Stoick pinched the bridge of his nose in exhaustion, his eyes closed. "Mr. President, what you are asking of me will take time." Beside him, Heather jotted something down on a notepad, while General Kwok poured himself a cup of Xiangpian tea, filling the room with a comforting aroma.

On the other side of the thick, blurry videophone monitor, the President nodded. His office was noticeably emptier than usual – the Vice President had joined this conference call from a command plane somewhere, and the Treasury man was by Heather's report in a bunker under Idaho.

_Someone _would survive to take charge of the government, even if the President failed to evacuate Portland in time to escape a Soviet nuclear strike.

The Secretary, who had evidently elected to remain in Portland, leaned forward. "We need a freeze on tactical nuclear strikes as soon as possible, with our troops still in control of the disputed area. This was part of the plan."

General Kwok tried his best to hide his anger behind his tea cup, which he kept raised to his nose. "Contact with frontline troops is sporadic at best. Radio communications in the mountains are patchy in the best of times, and have been seriously disrupted by the nuclear environment. Some communications equipment has proven… fragile against nuclear blast, shock, and electromagnetic pulse effects. And troops in contact… cannot simply stop shooting nuclear rockets."

The Secretary spoke. "General, we're not being pansies! We have already achieved all our objectives in this limited nuclear war. We have demonstrated our ability to take the disputed territory even while under threat from the Soviet nuclear umbrella; we have dismantled the Indian air defense network and removed virtually all Soviet nuclear missiles from Indian soil; and we have firmly repulsed the Indian attempt to retake the disputed territory by means _other than negotiation_."

Heather choked down a laugh. An interesting way, she thought, of saying that the Indians had tried everything up to tactical nuclear war.

The Secretary continued. "As regards the credibility of our nuclear deterrent, our riposte to the Indian use of battlefield nuclear weapons was a more than adequate demonstration of Pacifican nuclear superiority, and of our ability to respond massively, effectively and proportionately to limited nuclear weapons use while keeping the conflict limited."

_Fifty-four one-megaton nuclear bombs, nearly two hundred SRAMs, sixty medium-range battlefield nuclear rockets, and lord knows how many artillery shells, low-yield bombs, short-range missiles, and rocket launchers. That's some riposte. _

"All our objectives have been achieved. The risk of unwanted escalation builds every minute we fail to reach a nuclear ceasefire with the Soviet Union. Every second we delay this freeze, we risk losing the very good negotiating position your men have sacrificed so much to gain for us, and worse, run the risk of global thermonuclear war – the risk of losing everything! It is time to denuclearize the conflict, and go to the next phase of the plan: Negotiation and conflict resolution. But we cannot negotiate when _our _nukes are still flying!" The Secretary pointed to the table for emphasis.

Steel filled the Secretary's voice. "We've won. We need a nuclear freeze _now_, or we will _lose_ this war_._"

The Vice-President spoke. "General, your boys aren't being hung out to dry. Like you said, the Indians have had the worst of it. It doesn't sound like they're in any shape to push their advance any more than a few klicks – especially if you set off nuclear demolition charges and block the passes. Now the Joint Chiefs tell me that your boys trained for a fighting withdrawal in mountainous terrain under nuclear conditions. I know things have probably turned out differently from the exercises, but you should have a good base of experience to fall back on. And we only need troops to disengage, not withdraw."

The tactical air commander spoke. "Yes, but we need time to organize air support for the disengagement. At least three more hours to get the planes together and sort out the loss of two forward airfields."

"And scrounge around for helicopters." General Kwok added.

Stoick leaned forward. "Sir, we discussed this situation extensively at the start of the crisis, when we were running through the Tutti Frutti scenarios, and we did say that a quick nuclear freeze was feasible. However, we also expected to begin the de-escalation process at H+24, that is, twelve to twenty-four hours after the start of nuclear operations. We expected _time_ to sort everything out, _time _for the Indian spearheads to run out of steam – and gas, and bullets – and _time _for all the frontline nukes to get used up by themselves."

The Executive Committee and the assembled military staff exchanged views in hushed tones as Stoick's words sank in.

The President spoke. "So we're all in agreement. The critical factor here is buying time for de-escalation. You boys have twelve hours to get your house in order. We'll stall for time."

"We could announce a nuclear ceasefire to begin in twelve hours, contingent on the ability of our forces to disengage." The Secretary suggested. "Or throw in 'no nuclear missiles in Pakistan'. Not much point to them anyway."

The President turned to his attaché. "Bring SAC down to DEFCON 3. Do it in the clear. Make sure the Soviets pick up on it."

Stoick's eyes opened wide. By lowering the readiness of the Pacific's strategic nuclear forces, the President was making a clear statement of intent to deescalate. It would also made SAC much more vulnerable to attack and much less capable of retaliation, but, well, that was the point. The Soviets would have to be idiots not to take the olive branch.

He nodded. "Can do, sir."

The videoscreen went dark, and a chill slithered up Heather's spine as the room burst into a frenzy of activity.

No, she did not think this was over. Something was wrong – something big. But what was it?

She shook her head. She had a nagging suspicion that the something in question was completely beyond their control – beyond anyone's control, really – and more importantly, she had a job to do.

She rushed through her tasklist, and found Stoick up to the rooftop, busy discussing something with a pair of staff officers.

She took a moment to breathe, and gazed across the airfield. Press-ganged Mountain Rescue Chinooks, chartered helicopters, and a few Air Force choppers pulled off base security duties crisscrossed the sky as they staged to the front. A Vertitruck delivered casualties to a steady stream of ambulances, their sirens blazing as they sped off to Jiegu Town Hospital. Most of the casualties would have been transferred to cargo planes at airfields nearer the battlezone, where they could be quickly shuttled to the big urban hospitals out East. With casualty estimates in the tens of thousands, those big hospitals were an absolute necessity.

A stick of fresh troops waited in line as the Vertitruck's litters were emptied. Even now, reinforcements were being fed forward in a steady stream, to replace men who had been through hell itself.

Across the field, the town of Jiegu seemed awfully quiet. Traffic in the streets was muted. The aluminum plant's smokestacks lay idle, their high-voltage equipment turned off in expectation of attack. With most of the populace retreating to the perceived safety of fallout shelters, and with the potential for fallout to disrupt operations for weeks, it was the right thing to do.

Stoick turned to Heather. "Ah, Heather! How are things holding up on your end?"

Heather smiled. "Not much yet. It'll take a few hours for the intelligence cycle to give us something to report. There's fallout coming in." She gestured to the sky, and experimentally stretched out an open palm as she checked for dust.

"A light dusting never killed anyone." Stoick chuckled. "I just wanted some fresh air before we get cooped up for a week." The forecasts were saying a few days, and they could always take showers or change clothes after going outside after the worst of the fallout passed, but the point stood.

"Good call." Heather smiled. "I've just got a bad feeling about this, that's all."

A staff officer emerged from the stairwell. "Incoming! Get inside!"

They exchanged a shocked look, and ran inside as air-raid sirens began blaring across town.

=O=


	39. Central Sanctuary Threshold

Thanks to LongLiveOurKing, The DeathlyRider2287, Ridersofrowan, CajunBear73, and OechsnerC for their reviews and commentary.

=O=

Chapter 39: Central Sancutary Threshold

Chongqing Underground Complex

Sichuan Province, Joint Government of the Pacific

As the nerve center for the aerospace defense of the Mainland Joint Government, the energies of the Chongqing Underground Complex had been completely consumed by the ongoing crisis. Phones rang incessantly as personnel grappled with the vast scale of the strategic war that could come at any time.

On the Big Board, across tract of airspace stretching from Central Asia to the Yellow Sea, vast numbers of Pacifican SAM batteries and hundreds of interceptors mingled with upwards of a hundred nuclear bombers on airborne alert, scores of bombers returning from missions over India, and nearly a thousand tactical aircraft flying top cover over the vast armies arrayed on the Soviet and Indian borders. On the other side of those borders were arrayed the equally vast forces of Soviet Long-Range Aviation and the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces, ready to strike at the drop of a hat and as such, under constant surveillance.

Nobody was shooting at each other at the strategic level, but the Complex was still overwhelmed with the endless work that ensured it stayed that way. Lest SAMs shoot down their own aircraft, SAM batteries and interceptors had to be kept informed of each other, friendly bomber tracks, preplanned ingress and egress routes, and friendly tactical aircraft. Soviet force dispositions had to be monitored, analyzed, and countered.

And the realities of war had added newer, less familiar tasks to the list. Monitoring Soviet space-based nuclear weapons platforms, counting nuclear flashes over India, and tactical warning of incoming nuclear rockets for the Army - all had emerged as essential functions of the Complex.

"We have a launch! Assam!"

"General alert!" The duty officer ordered. An operator grabbed the phone, and began whispering urgently into it. Even thirty seconds of warning of FROG nuclear artillery rockets allowed soldiers to jump into foxholes, tanks to turn their thick frontal armor towards predicted blasts, helicopters to duck over hills, and aircraft to gain altitude – all lifesavers on the nuclear battlefield. Dug-in-troops had survived closer to nuclear blasts than anyone had imagined possible – although combat efficiency had suffered much more than hoped.

"Three launches. Looks like Scuds! Plume's huge!"

"Broaden alert to zone B1." The duty officer glanced at the screen . "Alert SAMs." For the Nike-Hercules SAM sites, an extra minute of prep time (and knowing where to look for incoming) greatly improved the chances of shooting down a nuclear missile.

"Diamond 14, this is Longhouse. Missile launch Bullseye 150/100. You are cleared to engage."

"Four launches. Definitely not FROG. Probable Scud."

More dots blinked to life.

"Six launches. Last two are _really_ big plumes. Possible SS-4 MRBM."

"Strategic weapons. Zone C alert."

"Seventeen launches total. Eight SS-4s, nine Scuds."

The room fell silent as the missiles climbed to altitude.

"Sir, they're on PAR-2. Tracking... Surviving Scuds are targeted on Mangkang, CB Charlie, CB Delta, and Linzhi – two Scuds each except for CB Charlie, targeted by one. Two SS-4s each are targeted on Lhasa, Naqu, and Chengguan. One SS-4 is targeted on Jiegu. One SS-4 appears to have failed in flight."

"Alert the Nike battery at Lhasa." Well within Scud range of the Indian border, and home to a quarter of a million people, Lhasa was defended by a Nike battery.

The duty officer winced. Unless the MRBMs failed, Naqu and Chengguan were goners. He had no assets with which to defend them. "And get the Nike battery at Jieju."

"Sir… Jiegu doesn't have a Nike battery. Just a few Hawks." The technician pointed at the screen.

"That can't be right. It's SASCOM headquarters."

"Sir, Jiegu is out of Scud range, and has decent air defense coverage. You'd be an idiot to waste a Nike battery there." The technician shrugged.

"SAC bases in Qinghai have Nike-Zeus batteries!"

"That's because SAC bases are strategic targets, sir, in range of strategic weapons. SASCOM headquarters was not considered vital in a strategic nuclear war."

The duty officer swore. For years, critics had lambasted the Pacifican convention of arbitrarily dividing nuclear weapons platforms into tactical and strategic based on range, saying that it limited the imaginations of military planners and that it would bear little relation to how nuclear weapons would actually be used. Those critics sounded downright prophetic now.

=O=

Across the rooftops of Jiegu, the air raid siren blared with banal noise, sending the town's fifty thousand inhabitants scurrying for cover.

Stoick ran into his operations center, Heather hot on his heels. A staff officer flagged him down. "Sir, Longhouse just came in! They've confirmed two SS-4s each headed to Lhasa, Naqu, and Chengguan, and nine Scuds targeted on tactical and strategic targets. One SS-4 is headed here." He paused fearfully. "Impact in four minutes."

Stoick nodded. "They're trying to cut us off from the Himalayas."

Heather tilted her head. "It would take some luck for four megatons to destroy rail lines – although radioactive rockslides could be a problem."

"But no luck at all to blow us all to kingdom come!" He leapt into action. "Get everyone in this building into the ops room and the basement corridor, and turn away aircraft on approach!"

Located in the basement of the big reinforced concrete headquarters building, the Ops Room (and the adjacent offices) were probably a good bet for survival… if the two-megaton warhead, say, missed by five kilometers.

"But we need to continue to operate throughout the strike, especially if we survive…" Someone protested.

"Start transferring control to our backup command post!" Stoick ordered. "They'll take over from here!"

Phones went to the ears of a dozen staff officers as they sought to bring their counterparts up to date.

Heather flung the big steel doors open. "EVERYONE INSIDE!"

"Have gas and electricity supplies been disconnected?" Stoick asked.

"Yes, sir. Attack procedures are being implemented city-wide."

"Tell the Hawk operators to abandon their posts! They don't stand a chance of hitting the damned thing!" Stoick shouted.

A small river of staff ran down the corridor and into the ops center, squeezing between plotting tables and office chairs.

"Okay, that's it! Everyone else in the corridor!" Heather closed the door behind her, waded through the pandemonium that had engulfed the operations center, and ducked into Stoick's office. "Wouldn't a smaller room be sturdier than a big one?" She glanced at the big support beams running across the concrete ceiling of the ops center, dreading the results of a collapse.

Stoick bid his second-in-command a final farewell over the phone, and slammed the phone back down on the receiver. "To be honest, lass, at this point, I'm more concerned with keeping up morale. Everyone already knows what to do, more or less."

Heather chuckled. "You think it'll hit?"

Stoick shrugged. "It's out of our hands now."

Heather sighed, pushed two chairs against the wall, and lay down on the carpet under them. Stoick sat down in his chair, and poured himself a cup of coffee from a thermos. "A pity." Heather pondered the events that had landed her in her current predicament. "You know, Stoick, I never really thought I'd go out like this."

Stoick added cream to his coffee. "Oh?"

Heather took a deep breath. "I didn't grow up in Portland. I grew up in Tianjin. Japanese-occupied Tianjin, in fact. And, like you said… I was a shooter in State Intelligence, not an analyst."

Stoick tried to look nonchalant. "Your… errands made that pretty obvious, yes."

Heather rubbed the back of her head. "What I'm trying to say is that I've lived with violence all my life. I tried not to think about it, but I always thought I would go down in a fight, you know? Guns blazing, bad guys closing in, all that jazz."

She chuckled. "And one day you wake up and start thinking about what you want to do with your life. Get married, settle down, have kids, that sort of thing? So I tried to track to analysis. And then I found out that I was _stuck_." Heather fought to find the words to express herself. "Nothing drastic, but just enough to distract. Little habits and worries that you keep around. Limited skillsets. Missing the adrenaline. And the damned agency just kept convincing me to go back to shoot at things, and the world keeps throwing things at me for me to shoot at."

She laughed. "I thought I'd never get out of the business. Then I finally got a job that didn't involve direct action… for all of twelve months. And then, boom! But well, at least I'm not dying in a gunfight."

Stoick chuckled. "Lass, you're talking to a tired old general who hasn't been a civilian in thirty years. My wife left me for her career, and my son left me for his. I'm the last person you should be asking for advice."

A tear rolled down Heather's cheek. "At least you got to have a kid. He's fine, by the way. I've been checking. I know you didn't want to know until after, but well… I'm far more concerned with keeping up morale at this point."

Stoick chuckled, and took another sip of his coffee. _This is good coffee. _

It wasn't, but there was no point saying otherwise.

Stoick felt a shudder reberverate through his bones as the solid concrete floor _rippled_, seeming to rise and fall like the deck of a heaving ship. _Groundshock._

The lights went out, and plaster fell from the ceiling in chunks as Stoick dove under his desk. _Airfields get groundbursts… _

Stoick closed his eyes as he waited for the blast wave.

=O=

"Fury 21, this is Longhouse. Stand by for nuclear battle damage assessment."

Hiccup nodded. "Copy that, Longhouse. We are ready to execute."

While Toothless had not been kitted out for battle damage assessment missions, the magnetic tape recorder could hold a few simple radar pictures, and Hiccup was confident that he could give a basic description of nuclear battle damage, even on an unfamiliar target. One of the anticipated tasks of Blackbirds fitted with reconnaissance suites, after all, had been damage assessments of Soviet infrastructure, industrial plants, and population centers following Pacifican nuclear strikes – all the better to know whether a particular target needed a follow-on nuking.

"Proceed to Bullseye 005/200."

Hiccup turned pale. "Longhouse, say again. Is the target Jiegu?"

"Affirmative, Fury 21. Assessment area is Jiegu town and adjacent command and control, airfield, industrial, rail, and road facilities. Initiation of two-point-three-megaton thermonuclear weapon recorded…"

Hiccup wordlessly jotted down the details even as his mouth went bone-dry and tears welled in his eyes.

Mission. Objective areas. Flight plan.

There was so much he had wanted to tell his father. So much he had wanted to say. So much that should have been said.

But talking led to shouting, so he had kept his mouth shut. And now, just as it seemed he might have gotten the chance to patch things up with Dad… the bastards had taken it away.

What had they been arguing about, anyway? It had been stuff, important stuff, stuff he would never forget, and probably couldn't forgive. It had mattered. It still mattered. _What he made me go through, what I had to shape myself into... _

But even as his skin pricked at the thought, his stomach felt... empty.

The last time he had seen him, Dad had grown his beard longer. He'd let himself go a little, and Hiccup had never seen his dad in a service uniform that sweaty, but he'd recognized his father the moment he saw him.

Mission. Objective areas. Flight plan. His hands were filling in the worksheet, but all he was seeing was his father, over and over.

He preferred the thin beard Dad had worn when he was still wearing oxygen masks and flying fighter jets.

He hadn't had enough time.

Hiccup had never quite been able to learn how to make the stuffed fish-loaf in the family tradition, and Dad had never bothered to write down the recipe. He hadn't quite gotten the hang of steaming a chicken taste quite like Dad– not that he'd had many opportunities to cook a meal for more than one person…

There had never been enough time.

"Hiccup. Stay with me." Astrid was talking now. She had overheard, hadn't she? Heck, she was probably filling in a backup worksheet in case he couldn't pull through.

He didn't blame her. He'd have done the exact same thing in her position. "Astrid, I've got this. I can do my job."

"Hiccup…"

"Fury 21, proceed to target area. Mission is critical."

Of course it was. The National Command Authority needed to decide whether, or how to retaliate – possibly within the next fifteen minutes. Blind, unlimited retaliation was just asking for a limited nuclear war to spiral uncontrollably into doomsday.

Limited. It was still limited, wasn't it? They wouldn't be asking for a damage assessment otherwise.

"Astrid, proceed on bearing two seven zero. Descend to fifty thousand feet. Prepare to cut throttle on my mark."

"Hiccup… there's still a chance your dad might be alive down there. Jiegu's hilly. If the Soviets hit the next valley over, the ridge might have shielded him from the blast. Their missiles are accurate to two klicks, remember?"

More, depending on the breaks.

"Hiccup, we are five minutes from the target area. If you need me, Hiccup, I'm here for you." Astrid winced.

What Hiccup really needed now was a hug – a hug Astrid desperately wanted to give.

But they were stuck in bulky pressure suits, strapped tightly to ejection seats, separated from each other by a wall of instrument displays and weapons system controls, and fighting a nuclear war.

"You're not alone." She added. "You'll never be alone again."

Hiccup said nothing. "Radar on. Mapping mode. I can do my job, Astrid."

"I know, Hiccup. I know." Astrid held her tongue.

"Curtains up." He snapped. It wasn't really necessary, but he wanted to see it for himself.

Astrid complied. The view took her breath away.

Ahead, a vast mushroom cap, twenty kilometers tall and just as wide, drifted lazily in the howling winds of the stratosphere.

It looked so… small.

The human mind, optimized to comprehend human-sized things moving at human-capable speeds on the human-useful distances on the African savanna, simply _failed_ when it tried to think about things too big, too small, or too far away. Two-kilometer cliffs didn't look much bigger than one-kilometer cliffs. Satellites arcing across the heavens at seven kilometers per second didn't feel much faster than birds soaring through the sky. And a twenty-kilometer tall mushroom cloud didn't look much bigger than a ten-kilometer tall mushroom cloud.

Hiccup turned on the telescopic camera. Nothing could be seen through the dust.

"Close throttle." Toothless quieted down almost mournfully, cutting speed to Mach 2.6.

A grainy radar picture appeared on Hiccup's display. The ragged edges of a nuclear crater, the outlines of a town, of a river, of valleys, of a runway, the crystal-clear lines of metal railroad tracks, highway embankments, and boxy concrete buildings…

Hiccup was crying. Astrid didn't say anything.

She didn't know what to say.

He laughed, and for a moment, Astrid thought he had lost it.

"Longhouse, this is Fury 21. Jiegu is short one mountaintop! Miss distance from runway six kilometers! They missed! They missed! Oh, god, dad, please be okay! Please be okay!"

Astrid laughed. If SASCOM had any sort of command bunker or fortified blockhouse, it would have had even odds of riding out the strike.

"Fury 21, please report status."

"Okay. Runway intact. Urban blowdown… heavy. Medium-to-heavy damage to residential areas. Medium damage to aluminum plant. Rails and highways completely intact, bridge intact…"

Hiccup was on the verge of crying with joy even as he described the probable deaths of tens of thousands of his fellow countrymen. Why did it seem that one life mattered so much more than thousands of others? How much could family count for? How much _should _family count for?

Hiccup didn't care. Dad had even odds of still being alive, and that was good enough for him.

"…fallout... Fallout extremely heavy. Anticipate high… no, _total_ radiation casualties." Thick, choking clouds of dust had obscured vast swathes of his radar picture, and the lines and crags of landslides dotted the valley.

A two-megaton groundburst on a mountain. All the fallout, but with none of it trapped in a crater, and all of it starting from up high, ready to be scattered by gravity and the four winds.

Hiccup inhaled sharply. This was not going to be good for any survivors.

"Solid copy, Fury 21. Proceed to patrol box nine, and maintain combat air patrol over northern Myanmar."

Astrid took Toothless into the sharpest bank she could. Hiccup needed to see the wreckage with his own eyes. "Hiccup, look right."

Hiccup stared into the gloomy maelstrom of dust and smoke beneath the shadow of a gargantuan mushroom, and reached for the radio.

"SASCOM headquarters, this is Fury 21. Come in."

"SASCOM headquarters, this is Fury 21. Come in."

Hiccup repeated his broadcast. His radiation meter beeped in alarm, and Toothless banked away.

Hiccup said very little as they headed back out east.

"Sorry we couldn't stay, Hiccup."

"What? Oh, no, no, Astrid, it's just that… the odds are still fifty-fifty that Dad won't be coming back." Hiccup whispered.

She smiled gently, hoping some of the warmth would get to Hiccup. She thought of reassuring him – that as SASCOM chief, and a big-boned one to boot, his dad would probably survive three weeks without food. But she knew that wouldn't help.

She knew it from experience.

"The road to Jiegu lies through New Delhi." She smiled. "The sooner we get this war over, the sooner the authorities can dig your dad out of the rubble."

Hiccup nodded. "Right. Right. I'll get to work…"

"And Hiccup… I'm here for you. I'll always be here for you, Hiccup."

=O=

Eight hundred kilometers away, ten more thermonuclear mushroom clouds rose over MRBM and Scud launch sites as F-111s screamed away.

Far below, the villagers of Assam looked to the greying, thunder-filled skies, and prayed that they would be the last warheads of the day.

It was not to be.


	40. Counterforce

Thanks to CajunBear73, OechsnerC, Ridersofrowan, and Atomicsub927 for their reviews and input

=O=

Chapter 40: Counterforce

"ADC confirms missiles in the air. We'll have their target list momentarily."

The National Security Advisor put down her folder, and shook her head. "Mr. President, the targets of this launch are immaterial. The fact of the matter is that, in Assam alone, out of the seventy-odd missiles they had initially, the Indians had eight medium-range SS-4 remaining after two weeks of Air Force reconnaissance flights and airstrikes. Assam was the best-surveilled missile complex of the bunch. If the ratios hold, over sixteen MRBMs and IRBMs might remain in the Deccan and elsewhere – capable of inflicting unacceptable damage to the mainland."

The Secretary frowned. "Janet, while Tutti Frutti I and II clearly weren't quite as effective as we'd hoped, I don't think we should throw out the playbook just yet. We need to see what they hit, and how badly, before we decide what to throw back at them. Exercising restraint is critical if we are to limit escalation."

"We don't need a retaliatory strike, or a tit-for-tat, Richard!" The Advisor threw her hands in the air. "What we need is counterforce. Our barely-nuclear disarming strike failed. We got distracted by the damned Indians throwing bombers at us, and blew our second wad on runways. Now it's time to do the job properly! And we need to do it _now_. Every second we waste is another second for those bastards to get their missiles in the air!"

The ADC officer put down his phone. "Chongqing informs me that all missiles are headed for key communications hubs – cities and towns - across Tibet. It looks like an attempt to cut off Tibet from the rest of the country. We're also going to lose SASCOM HQ."

The Secretary frowned. He might not have particularly liked Stoick Haddock, but the idea that a man he knew personally might have been killed in a nuclear strike was… unsettling.

On the monitor, the Vice President rubbed his chin. "What do you think, Richard, are we looking at an escalatory strike or a tit-for-tat?"

"It could be tactical. A prelude to an invasion of Tibet in the worst case, or a defensive move if they expect us to invade in a few months." The Secretary said. "Alternatively, it could be strategic - an escalatory attempt to dismember the country, since we never targeted Indian communications with Assam before. On the other hand, they can't really target our missile launchers either, so it could just be a tit-for-tat after we used megatonners on Indian soil."

The President nodded. "We wait for the damage assessment, and for the Soviet response to our offer."

The Advisor shook her head. "We need to take out India's surviving missiles before they launch, and we need to do it _now_."

The Vice President frowned. "Will this actually work?"

The Air Force attaché nodded. "Before Tutti Frutti, we had a contingency attack option drawn up against possible hide areas for nuclear missiles, in case we received indicators that they were preparing to launch and needed them destroyed immediately. We… continued to update it as the situation progressed, in case we missed a few missiles. About five hundred or so megatons will be needed to destroy this target set. Missiles can be in the air in five minutes, and will reach their targets in ten more."

"If we have these target lists, why were they not attacked?" The President questioned.

"These are area targets, sir. Large areas suspected to contain nuclear missiles – not individual missiles which were found and attacked with precision nuclear weapons. This selective attack option amounts to a carpet-nuking of large chunks of countryside deep in the Indian heartland. A largish valley the size of Long Island, for instance, might be carpeted with twenty nuclear warheads – ten to destroy the valley, and ten spares in case the first ten missiles fail. All airbursts, with very little fallout." The attaché shrugged.

"Five hundred megatons to destroy a dozen missiles that might or might not be present?" The Secretary was incredulous.

The attaché raised a finger. "Of those five hundred megatons, only four hundred megatons will be used to destroy Indian missiles on the ground. The rest will be expended in what we call a 'pindown' attack, in which we will detonate a steady stream of nuclear warheads in low earth orbit above the suspected missile hides. The continuous nuclear explosions should have a good chance of knocking out any missiles that try to launch just before or immediately after our strike."

"That'll kill any space station in range, and wipe dozens of satellites from the sky." The Secretary blanched.

"Space stations are cheaper than cities, and we hardened all our most important ones with armor plating." The Advisor pointed out. Radiation shielding with lunar material had been just one of the spin-offs from the civilian moon mining program.

The President whispered. "Five hundred megatons…"

"We've already blanketed suspected hide sites of Scud and FROG launchers in nuclear airbursts, and blasted every SA-5 site in the country - this is the same thing!" The Advisor exclaimed.

"Yes, but you're talking about quadrupling the total amount of firepower…" The Secretary shook his head.

"Firepower is cheap! Lives are expensive!" The Advisor threw her hands in the air.

"We also plan to carpet-nuke the airspace around Soviet bomber bases with nuclear missiles to catch bombers as they leave their airbases." The attaché nodded. "It's one of the reasons we requested funding for ten thousand nuclear missiles for the ballistic missile program. But the heavyweight IRBMs needed for this attack are still only a small fraction of our currently inadequate two-thousand-missile arsenal. We won't miss them."

The Secretary scowled. He had never been a fan of the heavyweight IRBMs - ICBMs so overstuffed with independently-targetable warheads that they _only _had enough range to reach any point in Eurasia from their silos in Sichuan (nobody having seen much point to popping nukes at South America or South Africa).

"It'll demonstrate our escalation dominance and _end _this threat – look, Richard. The number-crunchers say this option has a good chance of cutting the Indo-Soviet arsenal down to six missiles from sixteen. We can save up to fifteen million Pacifican lives with this strike, but _only _if we strike _now_."

_It all depends on the assumptions…_

The President stared at his desk in thought.

"Every minute we waste is a minute for the Indians to use 'em or lose 'em." The Advisor stared at the clock.

"Do you want the missiles warmed up, sir?"

The President nodded.

Ten minutes passed before the ADC officer picked up the phone. "Sirs. We have battle damage assessments."

The worst hit was Chengguan, a town of 50,000 which, according to a report from an F-4 Phantom, was now a smoking hole in the ground. A miss had eviscerated a mountaintop near SASCOM headquarters, causing moderate damage to a nearby town and smothering it in very heavy radioactive fallout. A few other small mountain towns had been blasted from the face of the earth, railway lines had buried by radioactive rockslides, and forward bases had been utterly destroyed, but that was it. Lhasa, the largest city under threat, was completely intact, save for reports of a few pilots who had been blinded by the nuclear-tipped SAMs that had blasted the Soviet missiles from the sky.

The Secretary spoke first. "On the face of it, this looks like a pretty well-calibrated response. Big enough to draw our attention, not big enough for us to break out the Drago sundae. War's still limited. Pretty encouraging, actually."

"Richard, they are not sticking to _our _plan! The plan was to fight this war with the Indian long-range missile threat _off the table_!" She yelled. "They are not off the table! The plan needs to change!"

The Advisor stood. "I'll tell you what's going to happen. If we go tit-for-tat and hit Indian lines of communications with Assam, the Indians will retaliate by taking out additional road and rail junctions to Qinghai and Xinjiang. That means Chengdu and Kunming go up in mushroom clouds – possibly several of them. Then we need to escalate to nuking Indian cities, and get a whole new war on our hands. We need to nip this in the bud."

A staffer ran, panting, into the room. "Sir. This just came in from the Embassy in Moscow. The Kremlin just called. They say that the nuclear strike was unauthorized, and are calling on us not to retaliate or face the consequences."

"Bullshit!" The Secretary bellowed. "That was a calculated retaliatory strike! Whoever launched it had instructions from _someone_!"

"What do they say about our proposal for a mutual withdrawal and negotiations?" The President asked flatly.

"They're asking us to take the matter up with the Indians, sir." The staffer shook his head.

"Have the Indians responded yet?" Thee Vice-President asked.

The staffer just shook his head. "They're still stonewalling. To be honest, they're still insisting that they haven't launched any missiles."

Well, it wasn't like the Indians had infrared satellites in high orbit…

The Secretary nodded at the Advisor, who was already shaking her head. "That's it. I'm through. If the bastards are trying to screw with us, they should have picked a subject safer than limited nuclear war – football, the Space Race, anything! Their response is unacceptable if they're lying, and if they're telling the truth, the Soviets have openly admitted to losing positive control of their nuclear forces in India." He got to his feet, and turned his gaze upon the President. "Their position is bullshit. We should launch."

The President looked around the room. "All in favor?"

Everyone nodded. The President gave a stiff nod in response. "We launch."

=O=

Missile Launch Complex

Qinghai Province

The Sergeant slurped his thin congee – rice porridge - as the brand-new computer in front of him whirred and clicked, straining to load thousands of lines of instructions into the state-of-the-art magnetic rotor, an artificial "memory" for the IRBM in the missile silo a few hundred meters away. The powerful computer finished with a beep.

His partner unloaded the new missile guidance disk onto his cart with a thud. "Okay, sir. That's the latest targeting information. We'll turn off missile one, and get ready to send the boys out to load the disk."

"It might have to wait. Choppers have been a little scarce lately."

A marvel of space-age engineering, each disk contained precise instructions for the missile to fly to any one of literally dozens of pre-located targets – instructions accurate enough, it was said, to land the warheads somewhere in the parking lot of a football stadium half a continent away – a tremendous improvement in accuracy and capability over the first-generation weapons of half a decade ago, which could only have fewer than ten targets programmed into memory.

The phone rang, and the Sergeant's heart sank into his stomach. He stowed his bowl of congee (and the scrumptious steamed dough bits within…), and picked up the phone.

Even being buried dozens of meters underground in an airtight capsule was cold comfort for the two lonely missileers.

Across the barren plateau outside, spaced tens of kilometers apart from each other and the launch control center, twelve buried silos sat, each housing a state-of-the-art nuclear missile, six stories tall, tipped by seven independently targetable warheads. Each was a probable target for multiple Soviet nuclear warheads – as was the launch control center itself. And all knew that two dozen meters of dirt would provide scant protection against a direct hit.

The airman picked up his phone, and independently verified the orders they had both been given. A third airman ran into the room, speechless at the spectacle. Phones were slammed onto receivers.

"Is it another drill?"

Keys were inserted, computers initialized, gyroscopes spun up, and circuits tested. Six agonizing minutes passed as the missiles, dormant since they had been planted in the barren soil of the Qingzang Plateau eight months ago, woke from their slumber, stretched, yawned, and brushed their teeth.

The airman gulped.

Six more minutes ticked by without any indication that this was a practice run.

"This can't be the real thing, can it? It has to be a drill."

A fresh set of codes came through. Both men verified them.

The indicator light for a live launch lit up.

"It's a live launch."

The Sergeant nodded, and they twisted the keys simultaneously.

On the barren plateau beyond the capsule, hardened concrete slabs were flung thirty meters into the air by pyrotechnic ejectors as gouts of flame erupted around them. From the flames emerged twenty-four slim nuclear missiles, JGAF and SAC insignia proudly painted between the orange roll stripes on their white fuselages, roaring out of their silos into clear blue skies.

=O=

"Mr. President. This is Longhouse. We have confirmed missile launch. All twenty-four missiles of Salvo Alpha are in the air. Awaiting Salvo Bravo. The pindown barrage will follow."

Not all the missiles would launch at once. Missiles targeted at targets further away (in southern India) would be launched first, and missiles targeted at nearer targets (in north-central India) later. That way, all the missiles would arrive on target more-or-less at the same time.

Thusly, there would be no problems with 'friendly' nuclear blasts disrupting sensitive missile guidance systems, thermonuclearly heated air currents pushing hypersonic nuclear warheads off-course, and nuclear dust clouds damaging nuclear warheads. No problems with _fratricide. _

The first stage solid rocket motors cut out, falling to earth as the second stage rocket motors ignited, sending the heavyweight IRBMs rocketing towards their targets. Nosecones broke away, revealing seven gleaming W-56 nuclear warheads, each shaped like a stubby little rocket with a conical nose, cylindrical body and frustrum-shaped boat-tail, and each capable of delivering over a megaton of thermonuclear firepower across continents with adequate accuracy.

The second stage solid rocket motors cut out.

The warhead bus – a spidery silver fuel tank and thruster assembly, with seven little white cone-shaped warheads stuck on top, drifted noiselessly across the heavens. For a brief minute, the little spacecraft joined the ballet of the cosmos, falling free, as all things do.

"Salvo Bravo away."

Across the plains far below, twenty-four more missiles rocketed skyward atop plumes of flame.

"Pindown barrage launching."

Below dissipating trails of smoke, slightly older missiles roared out of their silos into the sky, one after another, headed to points in space hundreds of kilometers above Indian missile complexes – along the projected egress routes for Indian nuclear missiles.

High above the Himalayas, the buses reached apogee.

Arcing earthward amongst an unblinking starfield, one of the buses, jets of hot gas puffing from stubby thrusters, made the final corrections to its trajectory.

It was now perfectly on course for the first target in its tiny transistorized brain.

With nary a shudder, the missile bus parted with its first passenger, letting go of the rocket-shaped warhead as gently as a mother putting down a baby. Thrusters puffed again, separating the bus from its little passenger, still travelling on its original course with nary a milliarcsecond of deviation, as if ignorant and uncaring of the departure of its maneuvering, forceful mother. Such is the nature of all things, as decreed by the First Law of Isaac Newton.

Thrusters puffed again as the bus sought to put itself on course for its next target. That course achieved, another passenger was gently released into the void.

Again and again the bus repeated the maneuver, placing warhead after warhead after warhead on course for their targets, until only one remained.

High above the plains of the Ganges, dozens of missile buses relentlessly placed hundreds of warheads on precisely calculated trajectories. On the radars of Aerospace Defense Command, the enemy sky filled with nuclear warheads, decoy balloons, and bits of random debris as the Pacifican strike arced towards its targets.

The final warhead on one bus shuddered gently as the air began to thicken around it. As if despairing of the aerodynamic burden it would impose on its cargo, the bus gently let go, and disintegrated in the howling hypersonic slipstream even as a ball of plasma enveloped the warhead's protective coating.

Across the skies of central India, hundreds of fiery arrows pierced the sky in perfect synchrony, blazing trails of plasma across clear blue skies as they descended, two by two, onto their targets…

Across the length and breadth of India, over three hundred new suns blossomed into existence in the space of two minutes - four missiles, five buses, and a few dozen warheads having failed-in-flight, misplaced their warshots, or dudded respectively (this is why you double up your warheads, people!). Heat scorched, blast tore, and radiation shone across valleys, rivers, and seas, destroying men and machines alike.

Mushroom clouds erupted from shattered, burning countryside, staining the skies grey with dust and ash. Most of the strikes had been airbursts, so fallout was light… relatively speaking.

Even targeted against military targets in the countryside, the counterforce strike would claim more lives in days than years of insurgency had in East Pakistan.

"Salvos Alpha and Bravo have splashed. Pindown barrage will be arriving momentarily."

Above the mushroom clouds, the sky glowed angrily with streams of red, orange, and green, visible even in the golden light of a setting sun, as six nuclear weapons detonated in low earth orbit above India _every minute_, sending waves of missile-killing, electronics-scambling X-rays screaming through the rarefied gruel of the upper atmosphere.

The Indian response was not long in coming.

Theoretically, it was a pointless gesture. The Indian nuclear force, once expended, could no longer deter _any _action by the Joint Government, and destruction of Pacifican cities would merely invite retaliation in kind. Launching immediately, into the jaws of the Pacifican pindown strike, would severely degrade the Indian response. Better to ride it out, negotiate, and use the remaining weapons to preserve the cities of India and the power of its Communist Party, instead of launching under attack.

Such theoretical concerns were far from the minds of the people who had just had a few hundred megatons of nuclear firepower dumped onto their heads in the space of a few minutes, regardless of how 'rural' the blast zones were.

=O=

From the cockpit of _Bewilderbeast III_, General Drago Bludvist gazed upon the ocean of mushroom clouds before him, and was pleased. Truly gone was the age of heroes – of individuals making great marks on war.

This was an age of systems. Only an interlocking system of weapons systems, backed up by hundred-billion-dollar economic concerns, vast research institutions spanning nations, and wielded by legions of personnel forged by the training and doctrine of a modern military force, could unlock such an awesome display of firepower.

And he commanded the mightiest system of them all: the exemplary nuclear warfighting arm of the Joint Government of the Pacific: Strategic Air Command.

He looked up at the glowing sky as angry red-orange streams of light danced across it from horizon to horizon.

"General, we're coming up on a SAM search radar. Two hundred kilometers." His pilot warned.

"Magnum. Missile away." Drago pressed a button, and a 200-kiloton short-range attack missile rocketed away from his aircraft, plunging into the gloom below.

The SAM radar blinked out.

Drago roared across the radio as his squadron formed up. "Radars on. Search the valleys! Find those missiles!"

"Sir, we've lost Gator 6, 7, 9, and… 2. Communications issue. Nuclear environment is really screwing up communications… and some of our gear."

Drago shrugged. "They know what to do. I trained you all well."

The pilot smiled. "Yessir."

The Valkyries charged on, ready to perform a clean sweep of the Indian missile forces. Erect missiles were, after all, easier to spot on radar.

=O=


	41. Countervalue

Thanks must be given to CajunBear73, OechsnerC, and everyone else for their reviews and input.

=O=

Chapter 41: Countervalue

The atmosphere in the Situation Room was grim. The Secretary, reverting to old habits, chewed his nails as the minutes ticked by, and the Advisor downed her sixth cup of coffee in a gulp. The President was taking notes.

"Ten minutes since the strike and ultimatum. Pindown lifts in eight minutes." The Secretary reported.

Intelligence, unhelpful as always, estimated that the SS-4s, a generation behind Pacifican IRBMs, would need between five minutes and three hours to prepare for launch, depending on their readiness level.

The SAC attaché continued to update the board with the latest progress of the bombers mopping up after the massed IRBM strike. "Another target found and destroyed. 200 kilotons."

"They can't have that many missiles. We're probably knocking over grain silos at this point." The Secretary fretted. "Dear god, what casualty counts are we looking at here?"

"All estimates for deaths exceed four million." The Advisor sighed. "But then again, we lost what – ten million, twenty million people in World War II? Fifty, one hundred million people in the Taiping Rebellion and Reclamation War? We came out fine - well, more or less."

She headed for the coffee pot. "India lost two million people in Partition just twelve years ago. And two million have already died in Bengal. India will come out of this a-okay."

She dipped her head low, unconvinced by the blood-soaked logic of history. "Dagnabit."

The President grimaced. "It beats killing two hundred million Soviets, or a half-billion Indians."

He had not run for office to become a mass murderer – but avoiding mass murder, apparently, was rather difficult in this brave new world of hydrogen bombs and ballistic missiles.

"Our best guess is that the Indians will retaliate against at least Kunming and Chengdu if they decide to launch a countervalue strike." The SAC attaché added. "To serve the needs of retaliation, we advise targeting Hyderabad and Bombay, both key transport hubs with similar populations to our cities."

The ADC attaché picked up the phone. "They're launching."

The President nodded. "We'll save the retaliation until after damage assessment."

"Two missiles in the air. One down. Pindown kill. One away."

The ADC attaché continued to rattle off missile launches and failures. The minutes ticked by.

"Three more in the sky now. One's down. Pindown got it. Two are past pindown. Headed to Kunming, sir."

"Where's the other one headed?" The President was frantic.

"It… looks like it'll fall short of Chengdu by a hundred kilometers, sir. Pindown must've gotten it."

The strike was countervalue.

"Begin planning for a strike on Hyderabad after damage assessment. Flatten the place. I want deaths with minimal injured – if such a thing is at all achievable." The President made up his mind. Hyderabad was smaller than Kunming, so it would require more flattening to achieve a proportionate death toll.

Everyone groaned. This exchange would probably add another two or three million deaths to the total.

The Secretary chuckled, trying to lighten the mood. "Well, at least we can make sure the war stays limited. I don't see the Soviets going for national suicide at this point, and I don't think we have much to gain from launching against them right now."

The President nodded. Despite the ludicrous megatonnage – unthinkable just the day before – had it just been a day? – the war was still _technically _a limited war.

_Technically, _the Joint Government sought nothing more than the removal of the Soviet nuclear arsenal from Indian soil, a fair apportionment of disputed territories, and maintenance of deterrence credibility through overwhelming retaliation with superior thermonuclear firepower – all strictly _limited _objectives. The dismantlement of the Indian nuclear program was still merely a stretch goal, although the President personally suspected that some sort of guarantee for the Indian nuclear program would still be needed to mend relations with India – if such a thing were still possible.

Unlike in past wars with Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany, unlimited goals like the dismemberment of the enemy state and unconditional surrender were nowhere near the negotiating table. The mood in Congress was somewhat different, but considering that the war would probably be over by the end of the week, one way or the other, the President was not too concerned. He'd end the blasted thing himself before the vultures could finish figuring out how to coordinate a vote by phone to impeach him, scattered to the four corners of the nation as Congress currently was.

_Oh well. We killed millions of Japanese too, and we're major trading partners now. How did that work, exactly?_

The Advisor stepped forward. "You know, I don't see why we shouldn't retaliate against the Soviet Union for this. Why should they be spared from any destruction at all? Millions of their proxies have died. Millions of Pacificans are going to die. Why shouldn't we hit the Soviet Union for this? Punitive strikes on the Trans-Siberian Railway or a strike on Vladivostok itself would…"

The Secretary sighed. "Janet, we don't know how they'll respond to that. They have a lot more firepower than the Indians do. We'll have to hit them with a full-scale counterforce strike just to be sure they _can't _retaliate. And at that point… we might as well throw the Drago Sundae at them and hit economic and industrial targets so they don't come back for round two."

The Advisor narrowed her eyes. "Drago was right, then. We _should_ flatten the Soviet Union while we still have the chance."

The unthinkable was on the table. The President shook his head slightly. Had it only been four weeks ago that they'd been discussing restraint, red lines, and rules of engagement?

The SAC attaché interrupted. "Launch sites flattened."

The ADC attaché raised an eyebrow. "Sir, Longhouse is trying to attempt an intercept of the missile. It's unlikely to succeed, but at this point, we're just going to throw an extra plane at it."

A staffer ran into the meeting room. "Sir! The Kremlin and New Delhi just released a joint statement on TASS and All India Radio. They're saying all launches were unauthorized, gave orders to cease further launches, and just announced compliance with our nuclear ceasefire. And they're pulling their strategic weapons from India."

The room fell silent.

"Now they say it." The Advisor took a sip of coffee.

The Secretary raised a weary hand. "Do we still flatten Hyderabad?"

Another aide knocked on the door. "Sir, the Indian representative and the Soviet Ambassador are at the door. They wish to discuss terms."

The President sighed. "We'll let them in after Kunming gets flattened. Then we see what they have for us. Unless their terms are accceptable, we flatten Hyderabad."

=O=

Hiccup sighed as Toothless continued his patrol pattern over the Myanmar-Indian border – the frontlines for ADC's defense of the Mainland against Indian bombers headed for the densely populated provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guangxi.

Longhouse hadn't said much about the ongoing nuclear war, but from the things civilian air traffic control – still at their stations – was broadcasting over the airwaves, it had escalated substantially. Radar still caught mushroom clouds popping over Assam just a few hundred kilometers away – unmistakable indicatons of a nuclear war still in progress.

"Fury 21, this is Longhouse. We have two SS-4 RVs coming in hot, and we need you to shoot them down."

Hiccup did a double take. "Say again, Longhouse?"

"Fury 21, we need you to shoot down two MRBM reentry vehicles headed straight for Kunming. Turn to bearing one-two-zero. We will guide you to target."

"Astrid! They want us to intercept reentering nuclear warheads! Turn due east and prepare to dump fuel!"

It was Astrid's turn to do a double take. "What? That'll never work! We can barely hit a missile coming up!" She put Toothless into a sharp turn as she oriented Toothless to the target.

"Fury 21, bandits are Bullseye 225/1500, closing at Mach 11, 900,000 feet and climbing."

Hiccup's jaw dropped. Sure, three-plus kilometers per second is peanuts for a rocket – ICBMs threw nukes over twice as fast, and space launchers and satellites whizzed around the earth at eight kilometers per second – Mach 24. But these velocities were _ludicrous _for airbreathing jets like Toothless. Their chances of interception were slim to none!

Weren't they?

He closed his eyes, and pondered the geometry of the intercept. "Astrid, once we orient, throttle down and climb! Keep us on heading 260! I need time to think!" He pulled out his grease pencil, graph paper, and slide rule, clenched his jaw, and got to work.

Astrid nodded, and pitched Toothless up as far as he could go, keeping a firm hand on the controls. Toothless seemed to hang in the air as he slowly, anemically, climbed into the inky black sky.

_We have neither been trained for this mission, nor is our equipment rated for this mission. This cannot work. _

Scratching sounds came in over the intercom as Hiccup furiously scribbled away on his graph paper, filling it with equations, graphs, and diagrams. "Longhouse, this is Fury 21. I have a firing solution. Please check my math."

He rattled on as Astrid ran a full systems check. Toothless was positively purring.

_If there's anyone who can pull this off, it's you and Hiccup. You're the best, and you trust him to be the best, too. You trust him with your life. _

_And you trust him with your heart. _

Hiccup took a deep breath. "Astrid. Here's what's going to happen. In simple terms, we're going to wait for the warheads to pass right in front of us, and shoot them down. The trick is timing, orientation, and command missile guidance. Begin fuel dump."

Thirty tonnes of JP-7 sprayed from Toothless's rear, spreading across the sky in a brilliant trail. Thirty tonnes lighter, Toothless roared skywards. At Hiccup's direction, Astrid brought the supersonic aircraft around in a country-sized S-shaped turn, aligning Toothless with the ground track of the inbound warheads.

"Bandits are at Bullseye 225/500, closing at Mach 11, 700,000 feet and descending."

"Astrid, throttle up!"

Toothless roared with two hundred megawatts of power as he climbed into the stratosphere. Astrid kept a firm hand on the controls of the lightened aircraft as her eyes flickered across her panel.

"Radar on! Infrared on!" Hiccup turned on his radar, and the infrared stayed pitch black as it surveyed with an unblinking liquid-nitrogen-cooled eye the cold void of the cosmos.

"Uhh… Fury 21, Bandit One appears to be a near-miss. Current track is… it'll miss the bulk of Kunming. Do you still want to hit Bandit One?"

"How big is the miss?" Hiccup asked.

"Anticipated miss distance is eight kilometers, plus-or-minus two-fifty meters.

Depending on burst height and target, that would maybe put a quarter of Kunming in the blast zone. People caught outside would be badly burned. Lightly built residential buildings would be goners, and people would die under collapsed buildings or in firestorms. This probably being an airburst, fallout would probably be minor.

Fallout from a groundburst would kill millions.

"Be advised, Bandit two will impact one kilometer from downtown Kunming."

Kunming would be completely fried.

The lives of millions of people had just been placed in their hands, and Hiccup knew it.

Hiccup would have to live with the outcome for the rest of his life.

Astrid turned pale as she felt the wheels in Hiccup's head turn.

_Four missiles for Bandit Two, or two missiles on each warhead? Save downtown Kunming for sure, or risk downtown to save all of Kunming?_

_It's my decision. I'm the man on the spot. _

This was different from dropping a nuke on a SAM site next to a town. They weren't following orders and flight plans anymore. Heck, he didn't even have rules of engagement to fall on.

Fifteen seconds to engagement.

Sweat beaded down Hiccup's face as his mouth went dry. Millions of lives might be lost – or saved – depending on how things played out. The end-to-end reliability of a nuclear-tipped Falcon missile was between fifty and seventy percent, depending on who'd done the checks. If his team had been the one on the ground, it would be closer to seventy. Had his team been the one to arm the missiles? He couldn't remember…

In the front seat, Astrid raged. No, no, no, that fool! It didn't matter! It didn't matter!

Whatever happened, Hiccup would blame himself for the outcome. He'd force himself to wake up every day knowing that a his decision had cost millions of lives even though the outcome was practically random! And knowing Hiccup, he'd feel the tragedy of every statistic, and blame himself for it!

"Hiccup!" Astrid railed. "Hiccup! Snap out of it!"

Hiccup tried an ethical approach. Was this a trolley problem variant he'd seen before? No, this was a simple risk benefit…

"Hiccup, it doesn't matter! It's random! Don't think about it! It's go time!"

She had to snap him out of it. She loved him too much to let him go through with this. She loved him.

She knew what to say.

Okay, risk benefit. Assess the downside. Casualty models were horrendously inaccurate, and highly dependent on whether the miss would airburst or groundburst, specifics of the how the population reacted to fallout warnings…

"Hiccup, I love you!" Astrid yelled. "I'm with you either way! Just pick one!"

Hiccup, shocked awake, finally spoke.

"Astrid, pitch zero zero two, yaw three degrees…" Hiccup turned his radar sensitivity up to the maximum, and watched carefully.

Toothless rocketed past 100,000 feet, and Astrid fought the controls as the turbojets began to feel the pinch of the thin air. For the first time ever… Toothless wasn't climbing anymore.

Toothless stared into an indigo void.

A hundred kilometers above, two reentry vehicles smashed into the wisps of air of Earth's upper atmosphere at three kilometers per second, compressing and heating the air to thousands of degrees before it could get out of the way. Red-hot epoxy coatings vaporized into the slipstream, protecting the relatively delicate warheads within from the intense heat.

The infrared sensor beeped, and two dots streaked into his radar screen, crystal clear against the empty backdrop of space. The dots closed impossibly fast.

Hiccup furiously scribbled figures onto his graph paper. "Bingo."

He pulled his trigger.

"Fox three! Fox three! Missiles away!"

_What the…_

Two nuclear-tipped missiles, gleaming white in sunlight brighter than over any desert, streaked into the sky.

Had Hiccup decided to engage both targets? The scratching of slide rules and of grease pencil on paper grew intense as Hiccup recomputed his shot.

It didn't matter. She trusted him.

Astrid held the aircraft rock-steady.

"Fox three! Fox three! Missiles away!"

Two more nuclear-tipped missiles roared into the void, and Astrid closed her eyes tight even though her flash curtains were drawn.

A pair of flashes snaked under her curtains.

Astrid counted heartbeats as the seconds ticked by. _One… Two… Three…_

A third flash snaked under her curtains.

If a fourth came, it would be the flash of a multimegaton weapon initiating over a major city.

_Eight… Nine… Ten… Eleven… _

_Come on, come on… _

Her radio crackled to life.

"Fury 21, this is Longhouse. Both bandits are down. Spectacular work."

Astrid swallowed hard, and almost choked as she forced herself to breathe. Behind her, Hiccup sighed audibly over the intercom.

They sat in silence as Toothless gently eased back down to 70,000 feet, exhausted by the ordeal.

Astrid spoke first. "I never want to have to do that again."

"Astrid…" Hiccup croaked. "I'm sorry I… got a little indecisive back there. But if…"

"No ifs, Hiccup." Astrid whispered. "It happened the way we wanted to."

Hiccup gulped.

"And even if it didn't, and even if downtown Kunming were a smoking crater…" Astrid paused. "…it wouldn't have been your fault. Missile failures are random. And even if it hadn't been random, which it was… I said I'd be with you no matter what, and I meant it."

Hiccup spoke, quietly this time. "Uhh… Astrid? Did you really mean… the rest of what you said… back there?"

Astrid nodded fervently. "Every word, Hiccup. Every word."

=O=

"Sir… damage assessment just came in." The ADC attaché spoke, crestfallen. "The nuke aimed at Chengdu… it appears to have detonated on contact about 150 kilometers short of the city. We believe… its radar fuse was damaged in-flight by the pindown barrage."

The President's jaw dropped. "I thought that… how many casualties?"

"We're awaiting BDA… but fallout from the groundburst will be heavy. There are ten million people in the fallout zone. And the Yangtze River runs right through it"

"Is Chongqing…" The Secretary's voice wavered.

"Chengdu and Chongqing are on the edge of the fallout plume, yes. But we don't anticipate significant casualties in downtown Chongqing."

"Casualties?"

"Up to a million dead and injured in the short-term, sir. And there will be additional deaths in the long-term. CEMA – the Central Emergency Management Agency is issuing contamination, evacuation and shelter orders as we speak, but we don't know how well they'll work. Anyone in a fallout shelters should come out of the fallout in Sichuan fine, and basements will help a lot of people, but at this point, the final numbers really depend on how well the population reacts."

The President glanced at the SAC commander. "What are your recommendations for proportionate retaliation?"

"Strikes on Hyderabad and Kanpur, sir. Both are important inland cities, and Kanpur sits on the Ganges."

The President nodded. "Do it."

"Sir, hang on." The attaché spoke, elated. "Lhasa's intact. No hits. And Kunming… we have no hits on Kunming!"

The Secretary motioned to the SAC commander to stop. "What happened? Did they both fizzile?"

The ADC attaché was jubilant. "A Blackbird aircrew shot down both missiles. According to Longhouse, the weapons systems officer managed to come with a workable firing solution and flight plan practically on his own, and was good enough at his job that he hit the darned things. They want to put him in for a commendation, sir."

The Secretary tilted his head at the President. "Does this change our retaliatory plan?"

The President turned to the SAC commander. "Flatten Kampor. We're not hitting Hyderbad."

The Secretary frowned briefly, and the President shrugged. "Too many lives have already been lost today. I'm not blowing up a single city more than strictly necessary."

=O=

_And so ends Chapter 41__! I almost can't believe I made it this far - and I have all my readers and reviewers to thank for it. None of this would have been possible without your encouragement and support. Coming up: One more chapter to wrap things up, and an epilogue. _


	42. Fallout

Thanks to Drago38, OechsnerC, and CajunBear73 for their reviews and commentary.

=O=

Chapter 42: Fallout

The Soviet Ambassador, a serious-looking man with a cropped-back hairline and square glasses, was ushered into the room, followed by the Indian representative. The Pacificans posted Marines in their halls of power - not Army men. A wise precaution, the Ambassador thought, to stave off coups against the regime.

His eyes widened in surprise. "Ah! Mr. President. I was expecting… someone else."

"I'm right here, Mr. Ambassador." The Secretary emerged from behind the door, and slammed it shut. He crossed his arms even as the President coolly examined the duo. "Have your governments responded to our proposal? Are you finally willing to negotiate, after all…" The Secretary gestured around the room. "…this?"

"Neither our government, nor the government of the Republic of India, ordered the launch of missiles from our missile complexes." The ambassador insisted. "And you know very well that the damaged inflicted by those missiles was a trifle compared to the sufferings of the people of India."

"Whether or not the launch was accidental or not has yet to be determined." A tinny voice emerged from the speakers of an odd contraption, about the size of a large oven, with a TV screen on the front. The firm visage of the Vice President appeared on the screen.

Why a face when a voice would suffice? The Pacificans really did worship technology, the Ambassador thought. And why wouldn't they? With a vast educated population from which to draw scientists, Pacifican technology was nigh-unbeatable. How could smaller, weaker nations like the Soviet Union resist the Pacifican juggernaut by any other means than iron discipline and perpetual readiness for war?

Not that their technological superiority was helping them right now.

"You can choose to believe whatever you want. But the fact remains that neither of our governments ordered a strike." He frowned. "Surely you are… _reasonable_ men. What point is there to the murder of yet more millions when we have acceded to your demands to withdraw our nuclear missiles? Do you demand more? The reunification of Germany under your fascist West German regime, perhaps? What madmen are you, to pursue… _unlimited _aims?" He gestured to his comrade. "And our great friend, India, wishes not to negotiate. Nay, the guiding lights of World Socialism desire peace more than the militaristic industrialists of capitalism. We wish to capitulate to your unreasonable demands!"

The Indian representative stepped forward. "In the interests of World Peace, the Republic of India is willing to submit itself to the unreasonable imperialistic demands of the Joint Government of the Pacific, whose cruel bombs have murdered so many of our long-suffering people. We fully accept the Pacifican proposal. You can keep the accursed wasteland of the Western Sector, and we shall take back the Eastern Sector that is rightfully ours!"

The Soviet ambassador tried not to smile. The Pacifican highway running through the Western Sector had been badly damaged in the nuclear war.

Across from him, the Secretary seethed. "We have strong reasons to suspect… that instructions were given to commanders on the ground… to launch their weapons at _specific_ targets in the event that communications were lost with New Delhi during a nuclear attack. Regardless of whether you ordered the launch, you created circumstances under which a semi-accidental launch could occur. You _thought _we wouldn't escalate against targets in the Indian interior, especially against such a _calculated_ strike – and you _thought_ that claiming that you had lost control over your nuclear arms would allow everyone to back down. I don't know which one of you came up with that scheme, but you didn't think it through, didn't you?"

The Secretary paced. "Now you get to say you gave us a bloody nose… by accident; and wave your peacenik credentials around by capitulating when it means _diddly squat_. You have no missiles left to withdraw from India, don't you – or maybe we missed two, three, out of two hundred?" He pointed at the Indian representative. "You got to say you resisted the big bad imperialists to the very end before giving up your cause – well, a million people are _dead_ because of your idiocy! I'm sure that plays well with your crowd! More martyrs for the World Socialism!"

The Secretary threw his arms in the air. "Oh, I'm sure you didn't think this all the way through. You made it up as you went along, and lo and behold, it's turned out _great_ for you! Your superior foe looks like a bully, you get to keep the square deal we offered in the first place, and you get to look like you got the last laugh! I should have just let General Bludvist burn you all to…"

"That's enough, Richard." The President turned to the two foreigners. "You have achieved peace with honor. But your conception of honor sickens me, and the price your people paid for it even moreso."

The Secretary spoke. "Here are our additional terms. You are dismissed."

The Marine ushered them out the door, and closed it in their faces.

The Secretary shook his head, and grinned. "Madman enough for you?"

The President made a so-so gesture, a knowing smile on his face.

=O=

The door to the stairwell opened, and General Stoick Haddock, draped in a rubberized suit and gas mask, emerged from the darkness of the Operations Center.

Jiequ was a mess. Thick, choking layers of dust – still radioactive after three long weeks – covered everything. On Jiequ's west slope, dozens of lightly built houses had collapsed in patches. The valleys had channeled the blast wave in unpredictable ways, badly damaging some districts while leaving others untouched. Stoick noted that the chimneys of the aluminum plant were still standing – as was the town obelisk.

Nothing remained on the charred, blackened eastern bank of the river. There, buildings practically untouched by blast had burned to the ground in a massive firestorm, as small fires ignited by the blast had grown unchecked.

Firefighting is impossible when the fallout can kill you in minutes.

A decontamination point, the insignia of the Central Emergency Management Agency proudly emblazoned on its white tents, was being set up near the railway station in anticipation of the need to evacuate the few survivors, and, without a nuclear war on, aid was pouring into the town. Helicopters crisscrossed the sky, and groups of soldiers in NBC suits methodically checked fallout shelters for survivors and cadavers alike.

A bulldozer, a lead-and-plastic shroud over its cabin, roared to life, shoving piles of radioactive debris aside as it cleared the railyard. Jiegu might be uninhabitable for a century to come, but its rail yard would soldier on.

Casualties had been much heavier than anticipated. The people of Jiequ had been well-prepared. Between the five minutes of warning, thirty-minute instructional videos, stockpiling, and duck-and-cover drills, very few had died from heat or blast injuries, and only a few from home collapses.

Many had died when the firestorm overwhelmed their basements and fallout shelters, literally baking them to death.

He gave a pile of dirt marked with a red flag a wide berth. A small pile of tools – too heavily contaminated to reuse – had been dumped right alongside the radioactive debris.

He turned towards the blasted peak seven kilometers away. Nearly three hundred meters had been taken off his favorite lookout - the nuke had been a groundburst, aimed at the airport. An avalanche of dust and rock had slid down the mountain into the sparsely populated valleys below, and from there dust had swept into Jiequ.

A huge cloud of fallout had smothered the city in dust that practically glowed with penetrating gamma radiation. The intense gamma rays had passed through… everything that wasn't heavy enough. People had tried – they'd boarded up their doors and windows, moved to the center of their houses, ducked under layers of stuff, gotten into basements. This would have been enough to shield them from regular fallout plumes; if the missile had just hit thirty kilometers away instead of seven, if the wind had been scattering the fallout instead of gravity, if the warhead had been an airburst… much of Jiegu would have survived to emerge from their shelters two weeks hence. But this fallout plume had been too big, and too close.

Casualties had been near-total among those without dedicated, deeply buried fallout shelters. Even many people in fallout shelters had gotten moderate radiation poisoning from the remaining 1% of the gamma flux that had managed to penetrate the recommended foot of packed earth.

Everyone needed treatment fast.

After three weeks cooped up in the sub-basement, the Headquarters building had begun to run out of supplies. Without running water and toilets, and with immune systems suppressed by subsymptomatic doses of radiation, conditions inside had deteriorated rapidly.

With the worst of the fallout gone (that is, you could stay outside for a half-day, maybe more, before getting ill), it was high time to evacuate.

Heather marched forward beside him, her duffel slung over her shoulder. "We made it!" She gestured at the clear blue sky, almost prancing with joy. "You're gonna see Hiccup again, Stoick!"

Stoick, weak from diarrhea, just nodded.

He made his way to the waiting transport. The turboprop cargo plane would probably have to be dumped in the ocean or something after this. There was no way they could properly decontaminate it. While the aircraft would be safe to fly a few dozen times, continued routine usage would expose crews to unnecessary doses of radiation. Furthermore, there was always the possibility of radioactive dust migrating and then accumulating to dangerous amounts in nooks and crannies of the aircraft – say, in the air-conditioning filters or in the oil tanks – and then seriously injuring someone trying to perform maintenance without proper protection.

He chuckled. Heck, an entire brigade's worth of helicopters and planes would probably have to be chucked by the end of this. They had an army - well, what was left of one - to evacuate.

The aircraft roared off the runway in a cloud of choking, grey-brown, radioactive, dust.

=O=

Toothless soared effortlessly through the stratosphere at Mach 3, twin shock-diamond-filled plumes streaming from his turbojets. Below and behind the roaring engines, a sonic boom cracked across the Deccan.

Silence reigned in Toothless's cockpit.

No alarms blared, the threat board was quiet, and the reconnaissance suite blinked quietly to itself.

This was a simple treaty verification flight, undertaken to make _really_ sure that the Soviets were pulling their missiles and tactical aircraft out of India as promised. The incessant sonic booms also served to remind the Indians who had _really _won the limited nuclear war.

Hiccup watched the cloudscape pass by his tiny windows. Towering clouds cast long shadows on the plain layers below. He smiled, relaxed, content, and secure. He was a little tired – he thought the rads he'd soaked up at Berk might finally be catching up to him, but the docs assured him his dose had been marginal and that his symptoms were probably a consequence of being an overworked fighter pilot.

He sighed happily.

_She said she loved me. And she really meant it. _

He had tried to double-check after they landed, of course. Astrid had just given him a huge hug, and kissed him right on the lips at the bottom of the ladder. In front of everyone – at least he thought it was everyone, since the ground crew in the hardened shelter had been in gas masks.

The thought that the girl he had loved – discreetly, politely, at a safe distance – for so long _loved him back_ was enough to make him giddy. The thought that a person he had admired for so long saw something worth admiring in him was something else.

But the best part was that he _knew_ that the girl he cared so deeply for also cared deeply about him. That, regardless of superficial spats, peeves, and the usual friction of life, Astrid would have his back, and he would have hers.

Well, for now – technically, the odds were even that a breakup would occur someone in the future, and he was quite biased at the present time… oh, what the heck. They could beat the odds. He _knew _it.

Astrid smiled contentedly as she gazed out the window at the cloudscape beyond. Far below her, layers of golden-yellow cloud shimmered magnificently in the light of the setting sun, and the snippets of land beyond practically glowed in the soft light of dusk.

They'd had a lot of time to talk. With moderate fallout from Jiegu raining across Berk, and air defense operations still ongoing, they'd practically lived in their hardened aircraft shelter for a week. While powdery, radioactive ash snowed gently across the tarmac outside, and settled onto the four-meter-thick reinforced concrete roof, they'd swapped stories, played board games, and talked about all the sappy stuff that neither of them had ever found reason to share - man, she'd gone soft – even as they continued to fly sorties, ever-vigilant for a resumption of hostilities.

She shook her head, and chuckled. Songwriters insisted that being snowed in was romantic. What would they think of fallout? _Baby, it's hot outside?_

Hiccup had done her one better, writing a whole new stanza for _Let it glow._

Speaking of which… "Hiccup, you're awfully quiet back there."

"Just… uh… enjoying the view."

"Well, we're coming up on the terminator!"

Ahead of Astrid, where night met day, a wall of darkness, razor-sharp and following perfectly the curvature of the earth, sliced across the cloudscape.

The terminator.

The edge of the great shadow cast by the planet Earth, beyond which, hidden from the unblinking thermonuclear gaze of the Sun, naked apes hid from monsters, gazed at the stars, and serenaded mates.

They hit a wall of black at nearly one kilometer per second, and Astrid sighed as she watched the stars come out of their hiding places to fill the night sky.

She turned the lights off in the cockpit, allowing the stars to shine on them in their full, uncontested glory.

"Astrid, we're over hostile airspace."

"By treaty, Hiccup, they can't shoot at us. And we'll have a minute to evade anything they throw our way anyway."

Astrid lowered her voice to a whisper as the night sky came alive with shooting stars. "Hey Hiccup? Remember that first night when you turned off the lights in the cockpit?"

"Uhh… yeah. I wanted to show you something cool, and…"

"I don't think I ever thanked you for that. So, uhh… thanks for that." She thought of how single-minded she had been before the war. Had she ever _seriously_ considered what she wanted to do with her life? What she wanted to achieve? What she wanted to leave behind?

"And… Hiccup? Thanks… for everything else." She took Toothless into a turn, and they began racing to point out constellations to each other even as Toothless basked in the starlight.

Astrid won. She had the bigger window.

They finished their countrysized turn, and headed back west, towards the tanker orbiting the Persian Gulf. "Hiccup? Wanna see something cool?" Astrid grinned as she caught a sliver of gold out her cockpit.

"What?"

"Sit back and watch the sunrise."

"We're headed west. The sun rises in the east, Astrid… ohhh…"

Toothless hit a wall of light, and Astrid pulled down her tinted visor as the harsh sunlight streamed into her cockpit. "Voila. A sunrise in the west."

At the equator, the Earth spins at just over Mach 1. Toothless, at Mach 3, had outraced the slowpoke rotation of the Earth that carried its continents into the embrace of night, like a runner flying forward off a too-slow treadmill.

The sky around the disc of the sun was bathed in intense oranges, fiery reds, and brilliant golds as the light of dusk was reflected off ash from firestorms, dust from pulverized countryside, and fallout from the bombs and craters themselves, all lofted gently into the stratosphere and scattered to the four winds.

Nuclear war made for the most magnificent sunsets.

"That _is_ cool." Hiccup pulled out a grease pencil, and began to sketch on a surplus worksheet. He'd have to reproduce it in pencil later, but it would do for now.

"You showed me so much. I thought it would be nice to show you something cool for a change."

They both smiled, and flew off into a rising sunset.

=O=

THE END

=O=

_This concludes Blackbird, a__ HTTYD fan-fiction of supersonic air combat, escalation management, and love on the nuclear battlefield. __It was a joy to write, and I hope you all found it reasonably enjoyable and came away with some interesting ideas._

_I have sketched out a sequel (and a miniseries-type thing) on a napkin, but it's probably not getting written anytime within the next three years. I will tack on a notification to Blackbird (probably complete with Epilogue II) if that ever changes._

_Note that I am a mere interested amateur, and have aspired to convey generally accurate concepts rather than strive for 100% technical accuracy, for which I lack the technical and academic expertise. I have a high confidence in the general conceptual descriptions of the technologies, weapons systems (mostly based on real-world equipment or proposals), phenomena, basic science, and basic philosophy of nuclear war. The rough tactics of nuclear, conventional, and supersonic air warfare are mostly based on real-world tactics and doctrine, but the exact details of those tactics are at times squishy best guesses. I have only the foggiest of ideas of detailed operating procedures (which is why I describe them in general terms whenever possible - they are usually long, complicated and involve checklists). The expert will doubtless find countless flaws and errors large and small._

_Chapter titles are a mix of Cold War jargon and rungs from RAND corporation think-tank theorist Herman Kahn's (42-step) Escalation Ladder, a model he used to help understand crises in the nuclear age (his 1960 bestseller, On Thermonuclear War, was not particularly good at predicting the future, but it remains a useful reference and is full of interesting ideas)._

_My thanks goes out to all my readers for sticking with me through over forty chapters of umm... "story", and to my reviewers for their invaluable feedback and excellent commentary (hey, I figured I was at least doing something right). Special thanks must go to CajunBear73 for the analysis and commentary, DrBlazer for the questions and sanity checks, LadyHaddock for the writing checks, Atomicsub927 for the technical discussions, and Ridersofrowan, OechsnerC, and theDeathlyRider2287 for their input and support._

_Well, there's still the Epilogue, but it's not all that much to look at..._


	43. Epilogue

Thanks to CajunBear73, Guest, and everyone else for their reviews and commentary.

=O=

Chapter 43: Epilogue, or, Who's ready to fight the next war?

Portland National Capital Region

Joint Government of the Pacific

General Drago Bludvist, Strategic Air Command (SAC), marched down the corridor, a confident grin on his face. Majors and lieutenants scrambled to the walls as he marched his staff of tall, imposing colonels and generals, decked out in sharp Air Force blue, through the halls of power.

In war and in peace, in the distant lands of Western Europe and in the corridors of the military bureaucracy, _presence _was critical.

Everything was going perfectly.

A hawkish new Administration, led by an inexperienced young President, was in Portland – one Drago was certain he would be able to manipulate into doing his bidding.

Congress had just passed the largest peacetime defense appropriations bill since WWII. It had something for everyone, but among the branches, Strategic Air Command and Army Ballistic Missile Defense had been the biggest winners.

SAC was getting everything on its wish-list: Space battleships powered by Orion-type nuclear-pulse rockets, nuclear-powered bombers, even controversial Pluto-type nuclear-ramjet-powered supersonic low-altitude missiles. Locomotive-sized monstrosities, the Pluto missiles would spew radioactive fallout in their exhaust and blast down small houses with their sonic booms even as they barreled towards their targets, roaring just over the treetops at three times the speed of sound, itching to eject one of the dozen nuclear warheads strapped to their backs. If all went well, the Air Force would rule the planets within four years – well before the scientists could stick their grubby fingers in them.

As for the Army... well, the nationwide rollout of the Army's Sentinel Missile Defense System had been given a blank check and top priority.

And his scheme to dismember Aerospace Defense Command (ADC) had finally come to fruition.

He walked into the meeting room. The ADC four-star sat glumly in the corner. Drago took his seat at the head of the table, and began to speak. "Good morning, everyone. There is only one… item on today's agenda." He grinned at the other attendees.

Stoick Haddock, just happy to be alive. The Secretary, his lips pressed tightly together in disapproval. The eager members of the incoming Administration's transition team, leaning forward over the table, hanging onto his every word. And others.

Drago sighed theatrically. "It is clear from the conduct of the crisis last year… that in the modern age of limited nuclear warfare… the command organization… that is Air Force Aerospace Defense Command - ADC… is… grossly mismatched to operational requirements."

Stoick saw no reason to disagree. ADC had not exactly endeared itself to TAC, in Siberia or over India.

Nor was he in any position to oppose Drago's empire-building.

"The cumbersome command… limits the _flexibility_ and deployability of our multirole nuclear air forces – an obvious liability in the modern age of _flexible response_. This is particularly galling a liability, since the central advantage of airpower lies with its _flexibility_."

The members of the transition team nodded happily at the buzzword.

"Dedicated interceptors are no longer a viable weapons system. In fact, ADC itself no longer operates any dedicated interceptors. ADC's Blackbirds are multi-role fighter aircraft, and through the Six Shooter program, its Delta Darts have been brought up to the standards of air superiority fighters, no different from frontline TAC squadrons. As such… ADC… brings no special capabilities to the table other than management of the integrated air defense system – a role which it performs in close cooperation with Army Air Defense…"

The grinding of the ADC four-star's teeth was audible from across the table, causing Drago to silently chuckle.

"As such… it has been decided… that Aerospace Defense Command will be disestablished. Existing ADC interceptor squadrons will be assigned variously to the Air Force Reserve, Tactical Air Command, and Air National Guard. ADC radar squadrons will be assigned to TAC and SAC as strategic requirements dictate."

Stoick nodded even as he cast a sympathetic gaze at the ADC four-star. _Better him than me. _

Drago sneered. "And ADC's Blackbird squadrons… will be transferred to Strategic Air Command. Henceforth, SAC will be responsible for generating and managing the forces… for strategic air defense of the Mainland, North America, and Australasia. After this reorganization, SAC, and SAC alone, will wage the fluid, mixed offensive-defensive nuclear aerospace battles that, as recent events have demonstrated, will define the strategic aerospace environment of the coming decade."

The transition team nodded fervently. The Admiral in the corner glared daggers at Drago.

"As coordination of these forces with Army Ballistic Missile and Air Defense assets will still be necessary, the role of coordinating strategic air defense will be handed over to a new, Tri-service Aerospace Defense Organization, to which SAC will _flexibly_ assign defensive forces as the strategic situation dictates."

Drago smiled as the Army man nodded in agreement.

"Even before the ragtag bands of Boudica fell… before the disciplined legions of Rome on the plains of England, unity of command… was known as a central principle… of war. Today, we… Strategic Air Command! Have restored unity of command to the nuclear battlefields of tomorrow!"

Drago took a deep breath.

"From treetop level, where supersonic nuclear-ramjet missiles will carve swathes of destruction through the landscape… to the stratosphere, where supersonic and hypersonic aircraft will do battle… to High Earth Orbit, where nuclear pulse battleships, blasting skyward on plumes of nuclear fire, will rain that same nuclear hellfire upon their foes… Strategic Air Command will fight... as one! For dominion of… the Earth! The Sky! The Stars!"

Drago raised his arms skyward. "We… will emerge… victorious!"

The room erupted in thunderous applause.

END EPILOGUE

=O=

_This officially concludes Blackbird, a HTTYD fan-fiction of supersonic air combat, escalation management, and love on the nuclear battlefield. It was a joy to write, and I hope you all found it reasonably enjoyable and came away with some interesting ideas._


End file.
